This is a rack that I designed and built for one of our family trips to Baja. We try to do a surf trip every two years to a remote area of Baja California, in 2015 one of my sons who is not really into surfing asked about 2 weeks before our departure date if we could bring motorcycles. I looked at off the shelf racks but due some of our unique requirements as well as concern about having the rack arrive in time before we needed to leave for the trip I decided to build a custom rack.
Some of the things I took into consideration were: Access to the the rear of the car, space to carry spare gas cans, and making one of the loading trays wide enough to carry a TW200 motorcycle (it has wide tires) even though we were not taking that bike with us on this trip.
Materials used on this project were: 2″ square tubing with 1/8″ walls, 2″ angle, and some flat bar.
Assembly is really pretty straight forward. I tried to complicate it by mitering the corners on the trays with angle but realized that for the cutting tools I had it just was not going to be pretty and that I could simply finish off the ends by welding 2″ flat bar across the end (duh!). For the tire supports in the trays I just welded some angle turned with the 90 degree edge up. I set the spacing on these so that the tire would fall into the gap and self lock in place.
We slapped some reflective stickers on it and loaded it up. I wasn’t super thrilled about how much ground clearance we had (only about 9″ at the far end) but with time running out it was what it was. We loaded it up with the two bikes we were taking and started our 4,000 mile round trip. I am not going to lie…. I spent a lot of time on the way down looking in the rearview mirror worried about whether or not this thing was going to work. I know that is kind of irrational since really the worst thing would be that could happen is that it would bend but really unrealistic that it would break but none the less I did worry.
Despite my worries and concerns we made it to camp, only dragging the tail coming out of a couple of gas stations in California and plowing up a bit of dirt road coming into camp where the road dipped and the came up steeply.
Having the bikes with us was amazing. It made it so much fun to get out and explore the area whether it was looking for new surf spots, beach combing, or just running into the village to get some cold Cokes.
After 2000 miles of worrying about the bikes I was over it. By the time we turned the jalopy around I didn’t care anymore and everything made it home just fine.
A couple of things to note. The center spar did bend a bit, it was really hard to notice at the point it bent (just behind the receiver) but when we got back the ground clearance at the back end of the rack was lower than when we left. to prevent this the center spar could: 1) be made out of thicker walled tubing, 2) be reinforced by welding flat bar to it in the area that is suspect 3) or by doubling up on the square tubing and welding a square tube below the level of the rack that goes into the receiver and raising the rack up. If I did it again I would probably go with option 3 because it would give another couple inches of clearance at the back end of the rack. Another change that I might consider would be to use foot peg bolts to secure the bikes to the carrier. This would eliminate the need to have the center spar go back so far and increase the ground clearance at the rear of the rack.