Cycleman1958

I-90 Westbound, 60 + miles out of Spokane at 70 MPH
Headwinds about 30, gusts 40-50.
Fork mount on Yakima racks gave out, but the rear wheel strap hung on.
Bike banged against the side of the SUV.
Got stopped fork all bent, got it inside, tight fit with the passengers and other luggage.

LBS tells me the cro moly fork bent back just fine, but the wheel is toast.

Any other experiences out there?

I think it is the combo of wind and worn mount. I believe I gave it the kind of clamp when remounting I normally do. Amazing I have a bike at all after this.

slowandsteady

I imagine it put a nice dent in the car as well.

I am pretty sure those bike racks aren't meant for 100-120mph winds.

Pharmr

ouch!....glad it wasn't a complete loss...good luck on the repairs!

HandsomeRyan

any chance you have angered the bike gods? better sacrifice a small animal just to be safe.

BlazingPedals

Oh yeah! You can bait Fluffy(tm) with your bike - sort of a karma thing: one less bike-chaser and the gods are appeased.

Dead Extra #2

Do you have pics? I just bought a Yak rack and it's so beefy, I just can't imagine it "giving out".

slowandsteady

Roofs have blown off of houses in less wind than he was subjecting that roof rack to.

https://www.marinewaypoints.com/marine/wind.shtml

Dead Extra #2

And your point is?

rha600

the bike up there alone isn't showing much to the wind. I'm also surprise it failed like that. glad it didn't blow off totally and then get run over as well.

MKahrl

My brother had a fork mount on a Thule lose its grip on the fork dropouts and the bike flew back and scratched up his car. I chalked it up to user error. I also started paying more attention to the QR tightness. Two months later it happened on my car and as I pulled over to the side of the freeway my cell phone rang and it was brother asking if the bike flight was caused by user error. He was passing in the opposite direction at the time.

After that I started putting a bungie over the top tube to keep the bike down. We both switched to an upright mount which more secure and has other advantages as well.

When you think about it those QR don't have to work that hard to keep the wheel in the dropouts during normal cycling use. Mount a bike up on a rack and now you have a 70 mph wind trying to rip that bike straight up out of the forkmount.

Dead Extra #2

I really would like more info about the failure mechanism. I would expect to damage the bike before it pulled out of the mount. Maybe I have too much faith in the clamp.

rha600

that site is ********.

haha. buildings get stronger as the wind speed goes up I guess.

and trust me, a CAT 1 hurricane can do a lot more damage than that. Katrina blew down a concrete highway overpass and blew a Semi off another one.

Retro Grouch 

By chance do the forks on your bike and your brother's bike still have the lawyer lips?

slowandsteady

They just list the various scales that don't necessarily match up. Plus a hurricane has copious amount of water as well as wind. Katrina was not a CAT1 hurricane. It was a CAT5/4.

MKahrl

Old bikes, never had lawyer lips. I can't stand lawyer lips; it takes the quick out of quick release. But in this case, they really would have helped. I later experimented with the rack off the car trying to pull the bike out with the fork tightly clamped in. Of my two Thule fork mounts, one would allow the fork to pull out and the other wouldn't. I would recommend that anyone with any kind of fork mount try that test themselves one day; it might reveal a weak QR.

rha600

I know the hurricane adds water to the mix (I live in south florida, trust me, I know hurricanes ) which makes it even more strange that the site would say that a Gale would cause more building/structure damage than a CAT 1 hurricane.

and ALL hurricanes are a CAT1 at some point. hurricane Katrina popped up 90 miles from my house on a Tuesday as a Tropical storm. That afternoon the hurricane service, for the first time put a hurricane warning in place when there was no hurricane. about 20 miles before it hit land on the east coast of florida it became a CAT1 hurricane. I was driving around in it for most of the night since the power here went out at about 7:00pm. Katrina didn't explode into the CAT5 storm until it got out over the Gulf of Mexico.

Cycleman1958

FYI: The report from the surgeons at the LBS is that the cro moly fork was salvaged by some blacksmithy but the rear wheel, the wheel that the strap held the bike to the car despite the fork mount failure, is toast and a new one has been ordered.

Got some dents along the side of the car. Fine with me, sort of like that scar Prussian soilders loved to sport to show they had been wounded in a sword fight.

rha600

thats awesome! Replacing a wheel is better than a whole bike.

SemperFi

I was behind an SUV not too long ago that had a bike fly off the roof onto a busy highway (Garden State Parkway in New Jersey). Luckily he was in the left lane and the bike landed on the grassy shoulder...lucky for me because I was right behind him.

apclassic9

I had that happen once, shortly after I started using roof mounts.... it was our fault - didn't quite have the fork in there tight enough. Anyway, the front flew out, the back held; one scratch on the car, no damage to the bike, but the back of the tray bent. I'm still using it, though, 6 years later.

miamijim

back in the late eighties or early nineties we had a customer lose and entire rack. They rented a mini-van for a weekend getaway. The rental company bolted the roof rack up and they were off. The rack, with 4 relatively expensive bikes, flew off the top of the mini van and bounced down the interstate. Luckily no cars hit it.

4 bikes and one rack......totaled.

Cycleman1958

What was the outcome, I mean did some get sued or something?

miamijim

Not as far as I know. The guy who rented the van was a big insurance agent in town. I do know that he submitted a claim. As to who he submitted it to I'm not sure.

Jim

Dr.Deltron

As a note here, remove the QR and put a few drops of oil inside the cam housing. (the end of the QR w/the lever)
Lubing this will help get a better "bite" on the fork dropouts.

maxwell48

Speaking of bike racks. I am looking at a Swagman Twister hitch mounted rack for a trip to Arizona. anyone have any experience with hitch mount racks? any problems / concerns I should be aware of?