Slide out tray for bikes in van garage – need sliding rails

I’m looking at building a slide out tray for the bikes in the garage of our van. The basic idea is pretty simple and I see no major issues… apart from the cost of sliding rails!

I’ve found these: https://www.gsf-promounts.com/container-red-base-mount-config-a/

I’d order the 1473mm length ones but they are £350! Does anyone have any knowledge on alternative sources of sliding rails which are robust enough but also cheaper?

in case you have no idea what I’m on about, it’s like this:

https://www.eurofitdirect.co.uk/pages/search-results-page?q=Ball+bearing+slide+1473

I’m sure @trail_rat made smething for his van that cost about 50p and untilised bearings. looked for it but i can’t find it now

Page 65 of this thread – https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/what-is-the-last-thing-you-made-pics-pls/page/65/ has something similar

Oh yeah – that’s my slide out bike rack. I’ll take some detailed photos for you OP and post here or PM you. Give me half an hour.

Edit – you don’t get a telescopic slide like that in the photo above, but cost was about 40 quid, not £190. 😳

Tthew that’s exactly what I’m looking for too. Can I get eyes on and any info. Cheers.

I used skateboard bearings, bolts washers and nylocs attached to a wooden frame , and 25*25 box section attached to the drawerwith Tek screws.

Works grand.

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A post shared by Terry Davidson (@trail.rat) on May 28, 2018 at 2:29pm PDT

OK, I’ll admit, I used trail_rat’s idea, but on mine the bearings are on the bed and the rails are fixed to a pair of cross-braces that are as wide as the van, so don’t need any bolting down or anything. This is it slid away.

The big fat peg at the back locates in a hole in one in the rear cross brace to stop it sliding back and forward under braking, it’s a bit of old brush handle.

I think this image makes it fairly clear how it works, this pair of bearing run up and down the channels. There’s a pair at the back because when it’s slid out, these are taking the weight of the both bikes, The bearings will take it easy, but I didn’t want the mass to split the plywood base. That’s the reason for the alloy channel reinforcement too, which is packed out nice and tight with tin can shims because I couldn’t get quite the right size.

There’s only one bearing at the far end, that’s just balancing the weight really, so not much force there. Below are the bearings, you can see the the outer diameter of the bearings is fairly snug in the channels.

The channel is known as Unitstrut, although I got a knock off from CEF because it was cheaper. The lightweight 1.5mm gauge stuff would be plenty strong enough, but I didn’t realise they made such a thing before I bought the bearings suited to the 2.5mm heavier strut 🙄 Unistrut
Hope that helps, send me a message if you need any more info.

I’m liking this 👍🏻

Ive been thinking about creating a slide out system for getting the kayaks off the roof of the van. Some great ideas, thank you

@P20,go have a chat with your local water fairies, and ask if they can show you the ladder system on the pumps. Simple but very effective.

What about server racks?

Accuride drawer slides are fairly reasonable, although not sure if they do any that have the sort of extension you need.

Thanks for the detailed responses. VERY helpful.

I looked at accuride drawer slides too, they’re about the same cost once you factor in the mounting brackets, but they do go up to 1500mm extension (with a 250kg capacity).

Will post pictures once I’m done figuring out what’s going to work best although if the van conversion has taught me anything it’s that I always undervalue labour time when comparing options!

Low tech solution: you could just have a set of bearings (in/on eg skateboard wheels) on the inside end of the rack and a couple of flip down legs on the other end. Less engineering, less time, less cost, just more weight on your arm as you pull it out.

I actually recently finished one of these things. It’s super useful. We got a new van and it was hard to always drag the bikes in and out of it. So we decided to do something like a slide-out tray for them. It was kind of hard to figure out where to start at first. We decided to look for a good stable mechanism that would not glitch or get stuck (I mean you wouldn’t want that) so we went online and started researching. We combed through a lot of options but decided to go with a German linear guides (or linearführung as they call it). My hubby is German so it was a pride moment with him. Plus he kept insisting that German mechanisms are the best out there. I gave in and we installed those. It’s been working well so far. Hopefully it will continue to do so.

Nice, the proper solution. How much did they cost though? How much extension do you get?