project bike rack

the show off

objective:
it was my first nyc bike tour in 2002, and joe, nuno, and i decided to take upon the 42 miles route through all the boroughs of nyc. but we also wanted to just bring one car with all of our bikes. joe had a bike rack that holds 2. not good enough. so i decided to make a bike rack that’ll hold not 2, not 3, but 4! i figured, since my car is a 4 seater, then my bike rack should be a 4 seater too! other spare tire mounts easily costs over $100. take a wild guess as to how much i'd like to spend? (hint = $0).

challenges/procedure:
do it in 1 night! then mount it, then test it, then haul my @ss (with the bikes) to nuno’s place in staten island at a decent time of the night so as we can wake up the next morning at 6am to start the expedition.
i had it all thought out, how i wanted it to look, where it’ll mount to, etc. luckily, there were plenty of left over steel in the concrete lab from a recent bridge building competition. the main body of the bike rack will mount tightly to the spare wheel. the part that juts out and actually holds the bikes will be removable. hence, it’ll need a connection. hence, it’ll take time to do connections. other connections are the clamping seats made out of steel angles that actually clamps and holds down the bikes. connections! they’re great, but they cost a lot, in time, and in money! i spent 80% of the time with these detailed connections!
once all parts were cut, drilled, temporarily laid out and clamped down, i went to town with the welding. oh, the fumes just get me high. (if you know me, it’ll explain a lot of things….alot).

features:
it can hold up to 4 bikes, though, i’ve really only went up to 3. and that was only once! i decided recently to cut off the last two, and just make it a 2 seater. the long jutting arm makes it a head hitting hazard. in fact, it has happened. (that’ll further explain a lot of things also). and poor jennie hit her head pretty hard just recently also.
most connections features nuts and bolts of 1 size so that you don’t have to use too many tools.

summary:
it served it’s job of carrying the 3 bikes for that one day. i’ve used it often since, but only for up to 2 bikes. so i’m going to cut it down. also, during mounting and clamping down the bikes, i need to use tools to screw down the nuts, washer, and lock washers. too many parts! i gotta use wing nuts or something. things could be a lot simpler.
project bike rack: to be further improved!