How safe are "Thule" bike racks when mounted on roof in an upright position on long (70 mile+) motorway journeys? I can carry the bike in the boot but have to take both wheels off as well as the saddle to get it to fit in, which is a real pain.
Spoiler on boot prevents using a boot kit.
Cheers.
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Never had any probs carried 3 bikes to France this way last summer
Thule are the best i had cheapo Towsure ones which have lasted us 6 years, gone a bit rusty now
But have inherited some Thule ones from my uncle quality a lot better, but the actual security of the bikes is just the same
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I would expect no problems except for the " obvious" to beware of height restricting barriers. SOOOO easy to forget!
I have to remember to park in the street outside and not swing into my drive else.....
I have the cheapest, simplest carrier. I have used it many times on the UNI run Surrey to Oxford with no problems.
I would expect the main advantage of Thule is ease of fitting it and securing the bike.
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I would expect no problems except for the " obvious" to beware of height restricting barriers. SOOOO easy to forget!
A guy on one of the Volvo websites was asking about touchup paint for the roof rails on his V70 the other day. Why? Because he has a remote controlled garage door, meaning he didn't have to get out to unlock it and instead drove straight in - with the bike still on the roof of his car.
He's lucky he didn't need rather more than roof rail paint, methinks!
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I purchased my basic spec, "Halfords" badged, "roofbar attaching" bike rack in the summer of 1997. It is still going strong with the only problem being fatigue cracking of the plastic wingnuts that mount over the underlying metal nuts meaning they have been discarded and I now need a socket set to do the nuts up. This is no problem as the roofbars are used with the bike mount most of the time and only occasionally for other purposes. The large plastic knob used to mount the clamp round the bike's downtube has not cracked, so mounting and releasing the bike is still a doddle devoid of socket set usage.
The roof bars are "Trafic" items from 1992 that still provide good, secure, service.
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Regularly carry up to four bikes on a Xantia estate using basic Paddy Hopkirk branded carriers like those described above. Never experienced the slightest problem, nor did I with the earlier BX.
Security of fixings always double checked before setting off and again after any stop. A mate lost his bike on the A43 near Towcester from a similar set up, but he's 99% sure kids tampered with it while parked.
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Thanks for the info. I feel more confident now.
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Another practice, if you so wish, especially if you are going on a very long journey, is once you have the bikes clamped into position, wrap some cable ties round beside each clamp / strap ie. on each wheel and the clamp tube and this provides extra security.
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Another practice, if you so wish, especially if you are going on a very long journey, is once you have the bikes clamped into position, wrap some cable ties round beside each clamp / strap ie. on each wheel and the clamp tube and this provides extra security.
My basic Halfords rack actually came with three webbing straps for this purpose. One is used to secure each wheel to the length of runner that it sits on, with aperture through the base of each runner existing for this purpose. The other is used as mentioned to further secure the downtube to the clamped risers that support the bike in an upright position.
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Watched a programme on German TV-like our consumers association.They compared 7 or 8 roof mounted bike racks and one of the checks was a slalom course thro' a set of cones-some pulled the bolts out of the clamps to the cross-bars after only a couple of swerves.
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It depends on whether the rack has been TUV approved. Those are the best since TUV are extremely rigourous in their testing.
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