How to carry bicycles on cars

[Wanda VanWinkle]

Give me advice on carrying bicycles on cars.

We need to take some bikes on the car. This is a one-time thing.

Should we buy a carrier? Can we borrow a carrier from someone? Any solutions other than purchasing a carrier that we may never again use?

[Wilson Deaton]

Borrowing one is a good idea for a one-time carry but it isn't as simple as it might seem because carriers are only semi-universal. (If you are buying one, a bike dealer will look up your car in a large index book to verify compatibility.)

There's a lot of variables to consider:

• Convenience: Will you put bikes on and off one time or several times?
• Do you need/want access to trunk/hatch while bikes are on or while carrier and/or bikes are on and loaded? (When my carrier is on, you cannot open the trunk. I used to have one where you could open the trunk with the carrier still on as long as the bike itself was unloaded.)
• Value of bikes (do they need to be locked on?)
• Does your car already have roof racks? (Roof tops models have to be attached to existing racks or you buy special racks to attach them to...
• Are bikes traditional style or mountain bike or "ladies specific"? Some require special adapters to ride on a "universal carrier"
• number of bikes

My rack is for a small car (Corolla) with no roof rack... I would have preferred a receiver hitch style but my budget dictated otherwise. It is a Saris Bones 2 (holds 2). The weight is transferred to the rear bumper and it has side stabilizing straps. (It was a little under $100 and I will be using it a lot more than once...)

Wilson

[Jim Franklin]

If borrowing is out of question, then I believe there are places where carriers can be remted.

[Mike Fraley]

You could try to snag one off of Craig's list, and then relist it once you're finished with it. If you're savvy about the way to do this you may wind up doing it for little to no money.