Trike Carrier

[Tilley]

Spent large part of today completing the modification of a towbar mounted bike carrier to accommodate my Trice. Seems to work ok.

 

[mjr]

Well done.

Chain's slack

@mrandmrspoves

 

[Tilley]

I shortened the front boom to ensure that nothing projected beyond the width of the car.

 

[cosmicbike]

What did you start with as a base for the rack? I'm looking to do the same thing for my Trice and currently looking to buy a used, cheap Thule/Halfords 2 or 3 bike carrier just for the towbar mount and initial couple of lumps of metal.

 

[Tilley]

I started with a Malmos engineering bike carrier with a swan neck flange adapter. The bike carrier has a tubular upright which slots into a socket in the base plate. So it was fairly easy to find tubing to fit into the socket. I then used a Tubeclamp three way 90 degree elbow to joint the short vertical tube to the horizontal arm sections. To get the horizontal arms to run parallel I had to get a local engineering company to bend the tubing to provide me with a short section set at 135 degrees on each section of tube. The rails for the trike are offcuts of steel palisade fencing and they are fixed using exhaust clamps of the appropriate size. It isn't exactly lightweight but it was something I could put together relatively cheaply and with little outside assistance. As the design has utilised the bike carrier base plate without modification it does mean that the two carriers are interchangeable.

 

[Tilley]

The inspiration for the design came after seeing this.
http://www.bak-rak.com/images/g3uk.jpg

 

[mrandmrspoves]

I purchased a 2nd hand Pendle 4 bike carrier and removed the wheel slots that were not required as well as the uprights.They are totally adjustable and lock with an Allen key so they can be put back on the rack if required for a different load.

 

[voyager]

here is sandman's
home built rack with rams in action
towbar mount and legal as the overhang is minimal

 

[fixedfixer]

@Tilley, great work. Just needs a light board to finish that off. Sandman's Rack is rather impressive too. My LWB two wheel recumbent fits fine on a tandem style roof mounted rack.

 

[voyager]

The sandman is one of 3 zombie going on a dutch trip all on home built trikes .
His rack is rather good as it uses a pair of car tailgate rams to make lifting it onto the back of the car easier.