Bike carrier

[ChrisV]

I have a bike carrier that fits on back of car and I hate it! Fiddly to attach, paranoid when driving, and my hybrid has a new scratch on it every time I have 2 bikes in there.

I have rails on top of my Citreon C3 Picasso. My wife has got a bike so I'd like to be able to transport 2 adult bikes and 2 kids bikes. It has to be a straight forward process.

I don't know whether to bite the bullet and get a towbar fitted and get a carrier for towbar, or get something for the roof.

If my current 'back window' job ranks 4/10 (made that up) for ease of use, security, bike protection etc where would you rate a roof carrier and towbar carrier out of 10?

And how much am I looking at total cost?

 

[broady]

I really like my Elite San Remo as they are tiny when not in use so I can store it with the spare wheel. My Thule roof 591 and 531 (I think those are the numbers) are alright, but a pain to store.
Tow bar wise, my dad has a 2 bike and a 4 bike one. They do work very well and my personal favourite when in use. But again they are even worse to store as so big and quite heavy.

I wouldn't say any are that secure if you leave them on your car while your not with it. They all rely on you putting locks on the bikes to make them safer and the tow bar ones are the best here

 

[ChrisV]

By security I meant that the bikes wouldn't fall off! Wouldn't be left on it.

Storage not an issue as have plenty of room in the garage.

 

[broady]

I was really sceptical of the San Remo as it just clamps the front fork and then a strap for the rear wheel, but that holds the bike a lot more rigid than anything else I've come across.
The towbar ones are more likely to get an odd knock from pedals on frame if you don't spot the danger first as the bikes are so close to each other.

If you use it lots I'd go towbar route. The bikes do 'wobble' a little bit, but foam padding protects frames quite well.

 

[DRHysted]

Regular use go for a towbar mount, but get one that the wheels rest in like this http://www.roofbox.co.uk/scripts/rbvehsel4The only draw back with these is any road muck gets thrown up over the bike. So after a long journey you may need to wash the bike. Very secure though.
Should add I also use a Thule roof carrier when I'm towing. It's a bit of a faff to get the bike on and secure, but still very good for distances.

 

[PaulSB]

When the kids were young we used to holiday in France most years. We had a Renault Espace for many years. This is mid nineties through to perhaps 2005/6. Up to five bikes to transport

At the time Pendle Bike Racks were the people to go to for tow bar mounted racks. We used to put four on the rack and the smallest on roof bars next to the roof box.

I was always delighted with the Pendle and got £150 for it on eBay when it became redundant.

Looks as though this is the current model. I can thoroughly recommend tow bar mounted racks and I would hope Pendle are as good as they used to be. It was a great company to deal with.

 

[Drago]

Tow bar mount would be my choice too. Or get a pick up and chuck the bikes in the back with nary a thought.

 

[Bazzer]

Years ago the first carrier I bought was a rear hatch/bumper type. Always wary when driving with it, which was confirmed when one of the straps slipped when on the M6.
Then got Halfords (bike upside down) roof mounted units as we had three flat bar bikes at the time . Fiddly to initially set up for each bike, but once they were, putting them on or taking them off was straightforward. And once on the car I could get three bikes on, secured and ready to drive the car in a little over 5 minutes.
More recently it tends to be just me with a bike so it goes in the back of the car.
IME the fuel consumption takes a hammering with bikes on the roof. If I was to go back to regularly carrying multiple bikes, I would look seriously at the towbar options.

 

[KneesUp]

I have a towbar rack. In fact I have two. Unlike most the towbar chose me (the car before last happened to have one fitted when I bought it) and I haven't chucked Thule-sized amounts of cash at it.

Carrier 1 was £15 off eBay. It folds up small and lives in the boot of the little car. It's ideal for one bike, although I have had 3 on it.
Carrier 2 is a MaxxRaxx my brother gave me when he'd finished with it. This means you can tow and carry bikes. It comes to pieces and fits in the hollow of the boot floor of the bigger car. It can hold four bikes, and does so with less chance of damaging paint as there is only one contact point with the bike (and it's covered in soft stuff) rather than two hard plastic cradles on the £15 one.

Both are totally secure - I used the cheap one to carry an eBay bike over the Pennines in snow and strong winds last week and I didn't give the bikes a second thought.

The smaller car (it's a Fiesta) came with a towbar (made it very cheap secondhand - not many people want a 1.2 Fiesta with a tow bar) but the larger car didn't. I got the bar off another car the dealer had thrown in with the purchase, and it cost £60 for a mobile fitter to fit it - you don't need a brand new towbar, it's just a dirty great lump of metal; if it fits it's fine.

 

[Salad Dodger]

Over the years, I have tried all sorts of roof / hang off hatchback / towbar mounted carriers.

My preference is for a proper towbar mounted type, assuming you know you are going to keep the car long enough to make the cost of getting a towbar fitted viable.

For our campervan, I got a towbar fitted and then bought a 2 bike carrier in the style of, but not made by, Thule. It is made of offcuts from the Forth Bridge or something similar. Heavy but VERY solid and carries either 2 mountain bikes, or 2 full size ebikes. Over 9 years we have done about 30,000 miles in the van, much of it with bikes on the back, and I have never had any concern about losing them off the back.

 

[mjr]

I have a bike carrier that fits on back of car and I hate it! Fiddly to attach, paranoid when driving, and my hybrid has a new scratch on it every time I have 2 bikes in there.

First of all, what's scratching the hybrid and can't you fix that?

If my current 'back window' job ranks 4/10 (made that up) for ease of use, security, bike protection etc where would you rate a roof carrier and towbar carrier out of 10?

And how much am I looking at total cost?

I looked at this recently and bought a good high rear rack.

The killer problem for me with roof carriers was that I can barely lift some of our bikes onto the high rear rack - it would need a two-person lift or a flight of steps and level ground to reach a roof rack, which is more hassle - plus I'd be worried about bike stability (based on what I see driving to the Norfolk coast in summer) and accidentally smashing the bikes into something (I just fitted into a 2.1m height car park with the bikes on the high rear rack last weekend - someone did watch me under, just in case).

The killer problem for me with a towbar carrier was fitting the tow bar, which apparently involves adding a section to the back of the chassis with a crossbar. It's not a car many will tow with, so I guess easy/cheap towbar fitting wasn't a priority and that it's possible at all may be a legacy of sharing a platform with other models... but anyway, that's permanent extra weight and fuel consumption, plus I'm not wild about having a narrow connection between carrier and car because some of our bikes are on the heavy side and I've seen enough videos of slalom tests like this (about 2 minutes in, edited to correct which video was pasted):

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYoYy3jhxGw


Apologies for the language but I don't know if any of UK organisations are testing racks with real bikes instead of racing feathers. At least I can monitor a high rear rack in the corners of the mirrors and stop soon if anything is moving - I might be able to do that with a towbar one, but couldn't easily with a roof one.

Also, I think the estimated cost of the towbar fitting was £450 for our car, but I think that's high because of the chassis extension, plus then you have the cost of the rack itself which I don't remember. Ignoring cheap deckchair-style racks that hang the bikes from the crossbar, the cheapest option would have been roof racks at about £150.

Good luck!