www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

Having trouble finding a roof bike rack for my car. I would prefer a fork mount system as it would be a nice positive clamping method (and easier to load) but these either don't fit my roof rack or are super expensive.

Having thoughts about making my own. I though unistrut or similar, but would the rear tyre sit in the channel ok? I reckon it wouldn't be too difficult to make something even tougher than the commercial versions.

It may be a silly question what car and year ? do you have a towbar fitted ? what sort of budget ?

07 Mk 2 focus estate. No towbar and not worth the hassle and expense of fitting one. I had hoped to just get away with a couple of the halfords basics at £17 each, seems not to be however.

FYI, the channel width of unistrut is 22mm between the curved lips which may not be enough, and being steel is quite heavy.

Try speaking to a local commercial vehicle bodybuilder, a supplier to those firms, or an aluminium stockholder, to find extruded ally channel in a U shape?

If you find the channel, you could then clamp them to conventional roofbars with u-bolts from (Halfords) a motor factor or a tyre & exhaust outfit.

A basic set of bars is likely to be £80-200 do you have roof rails, fix points or t- profile ???

or do you want to go the hatch mount route ?

Don't really want to do hatch mount as it will cover the lights/number plate. Same goes for Towbar mount, too pricey. I have a roof rack that fits into a C channel. It's a good rack, but the aero bars are 80mm wide and all the cheap racks only go to 60-70 mm.

After a lot of searching this afternoon I think I have found a good solution, hopefully it will work out as planned when it arrives.

Going to try the Elite San Remo system. It says it accomodates bars up to 80mm, should fit our bikes and has an added bonus in that it is a 2 part system so I can leave it attached to the roof bars themselves and fitting to the car will be much faster and easier (I don't leave my roof rack fitted all the time)

It is also a fork lock system which is what I would have built for myself anyway. Yes you have to remove the front wheel everytime you go out, but the bike is much more securely attached my this method so it's a worth while compromise in my opinion. It's not like taking the wheel off is difficult or time consuming.

Bike rack arrived today and happy to say it works a treat. While I never tried one of the cheapy ones I suspect this to be much higher build quality.
Was a little fiddly to fit but overall very pleased.