So, there was a post in C&V under the "Looking" thread about a seller with a bunch of car racks in his ad. Photo showed 10 or so, and I replied that I'd had that many over the years but now do not, and then began to wonder just how many I
do have and set about finding out. Laid it all for a pic.
rackage1.JPG
Far left is an old Thule gutter-mount with two fork mounts and one remaining upright tray that goes back to about '82 and my Dasher wagon. It was also used on my Nissan pickup for a couple hundred thousand miles of repping. Gone are the Hollywood pickup bed rack for the same truck and the Hollywood roof rack with fork mounts that served on a Sentra.
Next is the bike board I built for use in later minivans. Plywood sheet is notched to fit around one middle seat and the 2x10 screwed to it at the rear has fork mounts for both flat fork tips and lawyer nubs and an eyebolt for a cable lock. The black piece holds two fork mounts that were originally installed directly on the 2x10 but I decided to make it removable so I could have a fork mount inside my VW Westy, where it clip to the bulkhead of the rear seat. These days the ply stays in the garage and I just use the 2x10 in the Mopar minivan. The black block moves from van to van.
bike block Westy use.JPG
The boxed Allen Compact rack is my emergency travel-in-disguise rack that goes in car or van on trips without bikes. Just in case I'm 300 miles from home and find a must-have two-wheeler I'll have a way to get it home. I bought this at the end of my Trans Am attempt when I rented a car to get home and had to buy a rack. This is all that shop had and it's opened up a whole new idea of bike shopping.
Top-right is the trusty Saris 3-bike rack that usually rides on the back of the Westy but can fit almost anything and carry its share. I highly recommend this rack at every opportunity. It may not fit every vehicle and every need but I bet it damn near does.
Below that is a Saris roof rack with four fork-mount bike trays and clips to fit a rainguttered vehicle, like two previous Mopar Minivans and the Aerostar (with different fit clips) before them. Lotsa miles on this one, also. Somewhere in the garage are the two wheel mounts that go with it.
Bottom-right is the receiver-type Hollywood fork-mount two-bike carrier that was in use on a 1.25" receiver (earlier vans) but now also has an adaptor from Harbor Freight to fit a 2" receiver (current and most recent vans). This rack also used one part of the Saris roof rack fork mount with a long piece of 2x2 as a fork mount carrier for my wife's RANS Wave recumbent, and it would also have worked for our ex-tandem.
So that's seven racks if you count the double duty by the black block. Neither roof rack is in use these days. And that total does not include any other odd pieces that might turn up with further digging or the various accessories like a Thule fairing and a Saris fairing.
If our two other vehicles had 2" receivers on them I'd probably just get a Yakima or Thule swingaway rack and call it quits, but these will do for now.