Bonefish Blues
Banging donk
- Location
- 52 Festive Road
OP's for it now!That's a wooden version of the Helton carrier.
OP's for it now!That's a wooden version of the Helton carrier.
That's a wooden version of the Helton carrier.
Shake down test this morning had mixed results. The rack is rock solid but the straps that hold the bike to the rack are incredibly noisy. The one you can see in the middle of the pic above vibrates at the same frequency as a hammer drill and is equally as loud at 40 mph. Back to the drawing board - U bolts instead of straps I think.
I am not a tandem owner and have only ever risen one once, many years ago, but one solution to the weight problem might be a pulley or pulleys. (Assuming of course you have a garage with suitable joists you can attach them to.)Been thinking about how to get our tandem on the car roof cheaply and easily. Cheap meant it would have to be a home made solution. Easy because we don't want to knack ourselves getting it up there. A bonus would be if we could come up with something that we could use to lift the canoe onto the car roof as well.
Here's a picture of the prototype.
View attachment 404111
The tandem is easily lifted onto the hooks and fastened to the frame using toe straps. It's then it's simply a matter of lifting the ends of the cross members and sliding the frame across the roof. The blue cord looped around the top spars is to prevent the whole thing falling towards you when the tandem is hooked on. There are more elegant ways to do this but I couldn't think of anything simpler.
Once the frame is on the roof it's then strapped to the roof rack using one of our canoe straps and the blue cord is slipped off. I've tried it and it works. It needs some fine tuning though. The pedals are perilously close to the roof and the handlebars are touching the windscreen so I'll need to add some thickness to the longitudinal spars.
I'll post another pic when it's finished.
I am not a tandem owner and have only ever risen one once, many years ago, but one solution to the weight problem might be a pulley or pulleys. (Assuming of course you have a garage with suitable joists you can attach them to.)
I have a car which had as an option a removable hard top.(Which is bloody heavy). Some members of the car club use pulleys to lower the top on to the car. Some have gone stage further and use electrical ones.
Thanks for that @Bazzer but your assumption is correct, I don't have room in my garage for the lifting equipment. Apart from that, if I did have such a set up and got the tandem onto the car roof at home how would I get it off again when I got to where I wanted to ride it?
Anyway, if you read the thread you'll see I've got a cheap workable solution.