How to carry a Clem Jr on a Carrier designed For A Top Tube

[Gordon Stam]

This may be a multi part post because when I'm get a message saying "Your message is too long, etc."  So I'm going the post the pictures in a follow up. Maybe the pictures are too big? Anyway...

Maybe this is not news but maybe it is. When I bought my Clem I also ordered a rear carrier that fit into the receiver hitch on my car. I have a spare tire mounted Allen carrier on a Jeep and liked it so I ordered the Allen reciever model. They are pretty budget friendly at less than $100. After I got the Clem built up I went to put on the carrier and, oops - there's no top tupe to hang the bike from. Hmm, have to improvise. I tried many configurations but the bike would always be top heavy and want to pivot forward and lay more or less flat. That looked lousy and it was lousy, reqiring lots of lashing to get it to stay put. Finally I hit on a solution.

The pictures explain it but what I do is position the one horizontal support behind the seat tube and the other under the uppermost down tube. The frame rests on little pivoting fixtures with nylon straps to hold it in place. At this point the bike will still want to rotate forward, top towards the car, especially if the front wheel is turned towards the car (not so much if its turned the other way) so to prevent that - and this was the "aha" moment - I use a Voile strap to fix the crank arm to the vertical support, which I have padded. And now the bike is solid on the carrier; it does not budge. Easy on, with a bit of lifting, and easy off. I use a seond Voile strap to keep the front wheel from flopping around (I've sinced turned the wheel toward the back of the car, which limits overhang on the passenger side and also keeps the bike in place while you strap down the crank arm).

One bonus to this method is it keeps the bike up nice and high so no worries about hitting it on the ground. Everything is high and tight, as they say. 

Final note, the pump is at that screwy angle because then I don't have to remove it when I load the bike. It looks sorta weird but I'm getting used to it and I don't see it when I'm on the bike so who cares! It's held in place with more Voile straps, of which there are 14 on the bike if you count them all up.

Pictures to follow, hopefully.

[Gordon Stam]

[Gordon Stam]

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bun...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/ed125256-6d11-435b-b7bd-542db38b7fccn%40googlegroups.com.

[John Johnson]

Hi Gordon,

I have used a frame adapter before (something like this 

https://www.canyon.com/en-fr/gear/accessories/transport-and-travel/bike-transport/thule-bike-frame-adapter/10004231.html). But if you don't want to worry about multiple connection points, I'd change for a rack that the tires sit in rather than one where the bike is hung by the frame.

Cheers, 

John

[Gordon Stam]

Hey John, I thought about using one of those adapters but the the bike would have hung so low (I think) that there'd be a danger of grounding it out and ruining the wheels. I also thought about the tray style but that would have meant buying another rack and if I recall I saw very few, if any, that could accommodate the Clem's wheelbase. And they aren't cheap, and I am. Of course, anything can be made to fit but my current set up works so dandy that I have no reason to change it. Which is why I wanted to put this out to the group. A cheap Allen rack works a peach!

Okay, a bit more than $100. I must have got mine on sale.

https://allen.bike/products/deluxe-hitch-rack

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/8d6516e8-11b9-40d9-a245-0fb7bee9dea3n%40googlegroups.com.