Building a bike carrier for inside an estae car

I put this in the “wanted” section but realised not that many go there compared to here.
I want to build a bike carrier for the back of an estate car.
I’m looking for some cheapish hardware to bolt to a piece of plywood. Anything along the lines of Delta Pro Hitch, Saris Tracks, Minoura Vergo, Peruzzo in car or Thule 592 would be great.
I’m on a tight budget having just bought the car and put it on the road.
Based in Birmingham but will travel to collect anything that no one has a use for any longer for reasonable outlay.
Cheers,
Paul.

I admire your creativity, but not quite sure how it’ll improve things for you.

You’ll still have to remove the front wheel…and presumably you’re talking about bikes with QR front wheels ?

And if you’re having to lower the rear passenger seats, why not just rest the bikes on their sides with an old sheet between them ?

Is the roof high enough for you to wheel bikes into it upright ?

Grab a couple of 15mm pipe clips from any hardware store. Screw them into the wood so they sit on the inside of each side of the fork. Load bike. Use axle to tighten.

Obviously will only work with bikes that are not QR.

Or put them in upside down. Front wheel off and seat slammed. The handlebars do a good job of stabilising the bike. That’s how I used to load them in my Vectra estate.

I have a brand new Seasucker 15mm fork mount that I’d planned to do the same as you with but sold bike. Email in profile if any good for you

I looked at doing this, but the handlebar would be too high. Passat estate.

Thanks for the replies. I have enough space and height but this is for quick release forks. Regularly for two bikes but would like to set it up to take three.

I have the Minoura rack, not used it for years, however, I’m trying to locate a Berlingo so suspect it will be getting regular use…great stand and I’m hoping with the Berlingo that I can get the 3 bikes in using 2 mounts…so the 3rd bike will be balanced between them.

Skoda do a proprietary interior rack for a fabia, might be worth looking into?

Those look are very short travel forks ?

I don’t see the point!? we’ve got a 60/40 seat split, small side down, 2 bikes slide in, front wheels and saddles off, bars turned. Tie down strap to the luggage eyelet thingers to stop them flopping about. you’ve got 2 seats still available, and a load more usable space in the boot compared to that Skoda Space Destroyer set-up.

4 bikes go in on the big side, pedals off. Still got one rear seat.

I’ve got 20mm thru-axle, 15mm, normal QR, 135mm QR, wibbly handlebars, normal ones, and those curly bars they use in the Tour de France; 2.4″ 29ers, Fat, road, and 26″. All need a slightly different position depending on what other bikes are in. If I had something inbuilt, it would need a lot of adjustment, and I’d probably never use it anyway.

and the only area where I’m potentially a little short of room is bar height to the roof, so putting extra height in in the form of a axle clamp would cause problems with some bikes.

I’ve modded my Minoura ones to take almost any axle combo using some aluminium tube with hope end caps of various sizes. To swap sizes takes about 5 mins.

Get something like a San Remo fork mount for a roofbar and screw it to a stout piece of wood

Searches so far have failed to unearth anything I can adapt but something will appear soon I’m sure