Nukeproof? They’re not even drag proof!

Destroyed a nice Nukeproof Horizon carbon bars.. first day using new tow bar bike rack. We’re doing 70 on the A3M when bang! I think we’ve hit something until the partner goes “Shit! The bikes!” I can imagine her thoughts as in the rear view mirror they are suddenly gone! I glance in the door mirror and can see the bottom of the tyres so realise the rack has just done it’s TILT while we’re flying along. Holy crap, what a moment, but we pull over and get out and the only damage is the end of my bars has dragged on the road, wearing off about an inch of carbon. So lucky! I think we were concentrating so much on getting the ebikes clamped in place, that we forgot to ensure the tilt mechanism was fully engaged. Good job they were properly clamped on or it would’ve made quite a mess on the busy road.

Anyone else had fun bike rack mishaps?!

Shame you can’t stick a warranty claim in for a laugh.

Shame you can’t stick a warranty claim in for a laugh

Ha! CRC sale purchase, I wouldn’t even try my luck with that 😅 Checking them out though, I swear I could cut the bars down and they’d still be useable. Not gonna try it though 😀

Glad that was all that happened…and now I’ve had my serious voice done…surely the weight of the ebikes meant the tilt function wouldn’t work due to the weight – it would surely lock in place and remain there???

Lucky escape! I’ve had the same thing happen before but luckily only exiting the a trail centre car park, I had to stop the car and do the walk of shame to correct it while the whole trail centre cafe looked on.

surely the weight of the ebikes meant the tilt function wouldn’t work due to the weight – it would surely lock in place and remain there

I think it was a combination of going uphill at 70 and the wind resistance against the bikes. The 2 bars that hold the tilt in place can’t have been engaged properly… checking it out, stopped at the next junction, worked out that it needs a good slam to get them engaged. We’d gone about 15 miles, no sign of an issue, but when we hit the m’way speeds… flip!

Anyone else had fun bike rack mishaps?!

Define fun.

surely the weight of the ebikes meant the tilt function wouldn’t work due to the weight

Depends on the rack. I have the Buzzrack Scorpion. The tilt function is activate by releasing a clip on top of the number plate holder, then flipping the number plate holder back about an inch to release the rack and let it tilt. If the safety clip wasn’t engaged, and you hit a big enough bump, I reckon the tilt could engage, and the wind resistance at 70mph would push the rack back into a tilt. Even with a couple of bikes on mine, it takes a fair bit of force to lock the rack back in place, certainly more than just the weight of the bikes.

What was the rack in question? Asking for a Thule owning friend….ahem…

Westfalia B20. Was definitely user error though 🙂

reeksy

Define fun.

“Just” a destroyed wheel, or more damage there?

I’ve been in the car when an entire roof rack went tumbling down the road behind us, it was quite a sight. The two bikes were in Thule 591 racks and stayed entirely together still attached to the roof bars. It was the mounting point for the roof bars to the car roof that had given way. One bike only had a few scratches and mine had a slightly buckled rear wheel, scratched sti’s and damaged saddle. We were lucky it was limited damage and even more lucky that it happened at 6 in the morning and only a few miles from home.

Shame you can’t stick a warranty claim in for a laugh

I remember about 20 years back someone on a U.S. forum posted pictures of a bike that came off a rack and got run over by a truck. It was basically just reduced to small pieces of scrap metal. I was always tempted to get an old bike and run it over with an earthmover, then try sending it back to the manufacturer asking for a warranty replacement.

“Just” a destroyed wheel, or more damage there?

Two rear wheels and a saddle. I  reversed into a tree.

Anyone else had fun bike rack mishaps?!

Not bike rack, but 20 years ago we ‘lost’ a roof rack with a kayak and a windsurf board and rig on the M5 just south of Bristol.  Luckily it was 4am and pretty empty, but the whole lot hit a following Artic, which punted the Kayak back past us in the outside lane.  I feel for the driver who must have fair shat himself.

There was a pic years back of someones pride and joy toppled off their rack and was dragged behind the car for X number of miles. That result was the end of the bar was ground away along with more of his brake lever.  If I remember it was a hope tech evo and it had ground away the lever and most of the reservoir.

Not a bike but..

Just to make you all feel better about sharing the roads with roof rack equipped vehicles, a chap I used to work with, rear ended another car. The roof rack complete with ladders ripped off the roof, straight into the back window of the car in front.

The roof gutter failed on the car.

Not bike rack, but 20 years ago we ‘lost’ a roof rack

My best mate spent a winter as a driver for a very posh ski company in Switzerland. He would pick very rich people up from the airport and ferry them about for their holidays.

He collected an Irish couple one night and diligently strapped all their ski kit to roof of his company vehicle. The Irish guy actually commented to him “There’s no way any of that is moving”

About half an hour later driving down the motorway at 70mph and there’s a “ping” sound…then another ping…then a series of rapid pings as all the straps used to secure the stuff on the roof snap and all the stuff on the roof slides off backwards into the darkness of a swiss motorway.

My mate dives onto the hard shoulder and starts running back the way as the traffic coming runs over all the kit that’s strewn all over the dark, snowy road. Apparently a fancy Merc drove over the skis which in turn burst the Merc’s tyres. Utter carnage.

To be fair, the Irish couple were absolutely sound about it all and laughed it off.

A friend and I lost the entire rack and bars when the roof mounts failed on the Edinburgh bypass during a very busy Sunday afternoon. No-one hurt and nothing but a bit of damage to our bikes which were still attached to the racks.

I also knew a guy years back who lost his bike off his boot mounted rack. He hadn’t secured the bike properly and not only was done for carrying an unsecured load, but also had around 10-12 insurance claims against him as multiple cars ran over his bike and were damaged. I don’t think the bike came out well from that one either.

I had an ebike on the roof and was going down the A470 when it decided that it wanted a lie down. I’ve never pulled over faster than that in my life!

Luckily, I’d put a camstrap around the arm of the rack and the downtube, so it only slipped about a metre but holy moly that made me never put the ebike on the roof again.

And all of that ^^ is why I absolutely hate bike racks! I specifically bought an estate car to avoid any rack nonsense.

 I absolutely hate bike racks

Me too! In the boot of my Passat, they are safe and dry. But the ebikes are a struggle to get in, so the good lady insisted on getting her Volvo towbar and racked up. Who am I to argue? 😛

BIL has just written off a Ducati ST4 (older bike). Long story short, borrowed a bike trailer from someone they knew. Was told to buy new straps as the others had been stored outside for years. Bought new straps.  Rode bike to port, put bike on trailer of brother’s motorhome, got off boat other side, not gone far, bike fell off.

They couldn’t be bothered to work out how the new straps worked, so strapped the bike on with the old strap – it failed.

Family holidays as kids, I used to take my MTB and the only place it’d really fit was on the roof. We took some roof bars that my Grandpa had had (he’d had our car before he “donated” it to my Mum so they were allegedly proper roof bars for that car) so we fitted those to the car gutters. Front wheel off, QR mount to hold the forks on the front bar and then a toe-strap around the rear wheel to hold it onto the rear bar.

Except the front bar used to slide very gradually backwards along the gutter at motorways speeds. We’d have to stop at every services and bash it forwards a bit. It never tightened properly.

Eventually, I hooked up a bungee cord to the front bar, ran it down the outside of the A-pillar and clipped it into the front wheel arch, that sort of kept it sliding back too much.

Anyone else had fun bike rack mishaps

The guy that owned the company where I did my apprenticeship lost a top of the range Scott XC bike from a rack on the back of his Range Rover a good few years ago, which I found extremely funny. This was shortly after he’d told 2 of us that a coast to coast charity ride he’d organised was only for office staff and not open to anyone that worked on the factory floor, despite us being the 1st to show any interest in actually doing it

Many (many, many, many) moons ago I’d borrowed my Dad’s car to go up to Cannock Chase. We had an old school strapon (fnaar) rack.

Loaded mine and my mate’s bike on, hit McDonalds and got on our way.

Somewhere on the M6 heard a loud “bang”, so dived onto the hard shoulder thinking we had a puncture. Looked over the car wheels but could see nothing wrong, assumed it was just something in the road, so carried on.

Got to the Chase and unloaded the bikes, noticed my front tyre was flat, got the track pump and started pumping but it wouldn’t hold air.

Then noticed the massive hole burnt through the other side of the tyre. When I’d loaded the bikes, I hadn’t noticed my front wheel was hanging down in front of the exhaust…  This was in the days long before there was a bike shop at Cannock, so back in the car and home.

Tick. 25 years of using boot and towbar racks without incident, last month I put my bike on the Thule rack at 4am for short trip to the station for a long train journey to a 5 day bikepacking event.

I mentioned to my wife that we need to keep an eye on it as the bags meant I had to place the top clamp in a different spot and although it looked ok I’m quite cautious.

Top clamp popped off at 60mph, wife noticed straight away and said the bike had fallen off, we were hurriedly doing a 3 point turn to go and find the carnage before she clarified it was laying down on the rack still!

The rack is quite worn (two of the wheel ratchets no longer ratchet) and how the wheel straps had managed to hold the bike on is a miracle, most of the weight was high up and it weighed quite a bit. Was a very stressful 10 minutes with the whole trip in jeopardy until I’d worked out that there was only a very small buckle in the back wheel and some gouged invisframe with no soft spots or cracks in the ‘xc race’ lightweight carbon frame!!! It hadn’t touched the road.

I’ll be using a backup strap from now on!

The Nukeproof bars are definitely getting binned. Took them off the bike and can hear a crackling noise when I attempt to bend them. At first I thought the whole weight of the ebikes had been saved by the bar, but since read that the rack tilt doesn’t go that far, just far enough for wide bars to touch the ground.