I want to weld (mig) a bike rack (read bicycle) that will clamp onto the draw bar for my hitch. My hang up is lack of experience in choosing the correct gauge of metal. I'm thinking square tube, as thin as possible. It needs to hold 2 bikes.

General design is going to be a 'Y' to support each bike in 2 places. The clamp will unbolt from the bike rack itself to allow for different clamps for different draw bars. I have a design in mind for the clamps, really just need some advice on what size square tube (or alternates to square tube if needed).

Any input?

Thanks.

-Jon

No advice????? Alan? Anyone? :-)

I don't want to build a tank, and I don't want to be looking for bikes in the highway :-)

Anyone have a good resource at least for metal/steel size vs application?

They make what you want cheap enough thats it's probably not worth your time to make. Here's an example: http://www.bike-racks-plus.com/categories/..._Bike_Racks,824

This is a learn to weld project :-) I'm finding useful things I want/need to make for my self. Part 1 was weld a welding cart, then weld a welding table. now I'm onto the bike rack.

Also though, I want to be able to keep the ball mount free to connect the tire trailer to, all the ones I've found so far either clamp to the ball mount, or replace the entire draw bar.

Thanks for the suggestion though. I figure if all else fails I'll check out a few retail ones and mimic the materials.

-Jon

This post has been edited by rushman: Jan 14 2009, 05:45 PM

I played around with where to place a bike on my trailer for a long time. For me if I mounted the bike on the truck between the truck and trailer, then you have to remove the bike to put the tailgate down. Mount on the trailer and you risk the bike hitting the truck bumper in a sharp turn. I ended up finding a used hitch mount bike rack at goodwill for $25 and welded a receiver onto the back of my trailer.

What are you planning to use to clamp the bikes into place? Is this for the hidden hitch on the Z or does Jens car have a reciever? The size that you use coming out of the Reciever will alter what the wall thickness should be so it is important to what the receiver size is.

I'm going to make a clamp for the receiver(s) for the z and for dave's s2000, 2 different clamps out of 3/16ish plate and bolts, should be plenty strong. From there I'll probably make a box out of plate on top of the clamp that the vertical square tube bolts or hitch pins into. Should be plenty strong at the clamp.

You can cheat on something like this. What are you going to be holding? Two bikes? If so I could see a bike weighing anywhere from 16 to 30 lbs. Just play around with the design and try to deflect if with your body weight which should be much more than the bikes and give you a nice safety factor. You should have no problem making it out of 14 or 16 ga material for the most part. Or if you're bored like me "engineer it". Or you could go the Russian now Chinese way and simply copy an existing product.

Just don't asking on a welding board...those guys WAY overbuild things like welding carts and tables. And at other times way underbuild things.

My quick guess is that you will have a hard time welding anything thinner than 1/8 wall tube. So just buy 1 1/2" square tube in the thinnest wall you are cozy with and have at it. When I asked about the clamp I meant at the top where it is holding the bike.

The design will matter more than material dimensions. Got a drawing?

I'll post one up soon.

I'm going for something like this:
(IMG:http://www.kaboodle.com/hi/img/a/0/0/3/b/AAAACux6N3sAAAAAAAO8Qg.jpg)

The actual horizontal bars that hold the bikes will be slightly different, square tubes with exhaust clamps around cut round tube with padding on the inside to clamp the bike frames. 2 bikes, not 4. Bottom section will be similar. For the clamp to the hitch/trailer i'm going to do something similar this (although smaller scale) to allow for some versitility:
(IMG:http://www.bikerackshops.com/images/hitch_bike_racks/SG64025large.jpg)

I'll probably make 2 clamps, one for parallel mounting and one for perpendicular mounting.

I'll also allow the vertical portion of the rack to bolt in either direction to the base mount that goes into the clamp, so you can mount the clamp perpendicular but still have the bikes parallel to the car's bumper.

I'm willing to go through a few iterations of this since this is really just a get better at welding project that has an ultimate use.