Bike Rack for Pop-Up Advice

[lilbeanbug]

My family will be camping at Fort Wilderness in October. We are so excited as this is our first time! After reading the board about all the fun biking in the campground, we want to bring our bikes!

We have a Rockwood Pop-Up Camper. I would love to hear suggestions, pros/cons about how to attach a bike rack onto our camper.

Thanks in advance for all of the great suggestions!

Heather

 

[mnsprk]

Your best bet would be to get a roof mounted rack.(designed for a pop-up) That allows you to keep the proper weight on the trailer tongue to prevent sway. Also the rear bumpers are normally not designed for any kind of extra weight. There are even some TT frames that specifically tell you not to put a bike rack on the bumper or it will void the warranty.

There are also some hitch adapters that will allow you add a bike rack to your tow vehicle and still tow the trailer.

http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/item/4-dual-hitch-receiver/34685

No matter how you get them there, have fun

 

[ElementCamper]

I'd recommend the rack that goes on top of the popup for proper weight distribution.
I bought the hitch adapter that allows towing with a bike rack but found that it moves the trailer way back AND adds more weight to the tongue than I feel safe having back there. If you had a large tow vehicle though it might be a good solution, just didn't really work for me due to the extra weight on the hitch.

I actually bought a folding bike for this trip as I didn't want to bring my full size Electra Townie. It's kind of an expensive bike and I didn't want it locked to a bike rack in the rain while I was roaming the parks. The folding bike takes up half the space and doesn't weigh near as much as the big bike, yet still has 12 speeds and a nice ride for somewhere like FW.

 

[Solamom]

We used a double receiver for the pop up and a bike rack (we have an Allen 5 bike rack). It worked out OK just be careful backing up, when turning tightly to get in the site, the pop up hit my hubby's new Trek bike and did minor damage. We did carry 5 bikes on it and my hubby said the tongue weight was OK.

The pop up wasn't ours, we borrowed it. I went camping w/ the friend we borrowed it from early and they had a receiver mounted on the back frame of the pop up. I followed her towing it to the campground and the extra weight of the bikes on the back made it fishtail the whole way. Then on the return trip home, it eventually gave way and broke completely off...thankfully not on the interstate.

Don't know anything about roof mounted ones though.....

 

[KristinU]

How about a roof rack for your tow vehicle? That's what we do. If we're going somewhere where we want to take kayaks and don't have room on the roof rack for bikes, we hang them off the back of the TV with a Saris Bones carrier. If you hang them off the back of the TV, though, you'll want to add their weight to your tongue weight to stay within your vehicle's guidelines (at least we made sure of that before towing that way...since the weight is all concentrated right there).

The other thing about having bikes up on top of the TV is if you stop for an overnight en route - if your bikes were on top of the pop-up you'd need to take them off before popping up.

 

[natmom]

Hi,

We have a rockwood tent trailer and we bought a prorac tent trailer bike rack. We are very pleased with it. It is easy to get the bikes on. You don't need to drill holes in the roof which might void your warranty. It can be a little time consuming strapping them on but they are very solid when towing and they don;t move around at all.