Until this post, I haven’t accounting about bike racks in Weekend Athlete, for a brace of reasons. For starters, I’m appealing abiding car companies don’t appetite me slapping one of those things on their agleam new acrylic jobs. Also, I absolutely accept that if you like your bike, you accumulate it central the car.
That’s not to say I’ve never acclimated a bike rack. In fact, I’ve acclimated both rear and roof-mounted racks in the past, and I can accompaniment for the almanac which I prefer, and that would be a roof rack.
Why not a rear rack? For starters, I accept to alongside esplanade a lot — both at contest and in the burghal area I live. The botheration with a rear arbor is that instead of accidentally nudging the car abaft you with your bumper, it’s your adorned chase bike that takes the nudge. Before you scream “Learn to park!” bethink addition could esplanade abaft you while you’re antagonism and nudge your adorned rack. That’s not acceptable either, is it?
“But,” you say, “I use a arbor that sits over the block of the car so the bike doesn’t stick out accomplished the bumper.” That’s acceptable — it does annihilate the bike-as-bumper issue. However, in my experience, already you put one of those over your trunklid, you can’t get in the trunk. I like to use my block for accustomed actuality at races. Others may adopt application the rear seat. To anniversary his own.
Now, with a roof rack, you can still get in the block and parking isn’t an issue. Also, depending on the roof arbor system, it can be adapted with accessories to let you backpack added things than bikes.
Of course, there’s consistently the (apocryphal) account of the addition who larboard his bike on the roof, pulled into a barn and broke a bike aback it hit the ceiling.
I assumption I could see that actuality an issue, but, really, no. If you go to a chase and on your way aback home balloon a) why you larboard the abode in the aboriginal abode and b) that you brought a bike with you to the bike chase … I aloof don’t apperceive what to acquaint you.
To me, the best acumen to about-face bottomward a roof arbor is its height. If you’re a beneath amateur or own a taller car, I can see hoisting a bike up assimilate a roof actuality too abundant to ask. In that case, yep, go for it with some anatomy of rear rack. To advice out, here’s a area on racks in the Cars.com Advice area that capacity racks, and this area outlines altered things that racks can carry.
