Roof Top Bicycle CarriersThere is a huge selection of different bike carriers and styles available these days, so it can be confusing when looking at your next purchase, we try to make life easier by stocking the best in each category and subcategory.
Roof top bike carriers are one of the major types of bike carriers available and one of the most popular. Just to make life more interesting, within this category there are different types of carriers, depending on how your bike is secured. There are Fork, Wheel, and Frame mounted options. These days they are all good ways to secure your bike, with personal preference and the type of bike you're carrying being the deciding factors. FORK MOUNTED CARRIERS
Fork mounts require the removal of the front wheel and the bike is secured via the fork tips or the thru axle.
For some a fork mounted bike rack is the only way to go whether this is due to the rack not making contact with the frame or in many cases simply for the lower profile aesthetics.
That being said the fork mount has become the least popular option since the vast improvements in front wheel mounted carriers and the now common use of through axels.
Hub and axel sizes seem to change somewhat frequently within the bike world and this can become fiddly and costly when you have to purchase additional through axel adapters for your rack.
Also, by design fork mounted racks tend to be long and offset rearwards which can pose a problem for hatch clearance on small cars. FRONT WHEEL MOUNTED CARRIERS
This style of rack is really the choice for the serious cycling enthusiast, regular riders or anyone who is precious about their bike.
Front wheel mounts are the best of both worlds in that they do not contact your frame and are very stable like a fork mount, but they also possess great ease of use in loading and not having to remove your wheel as you would with a fork mount. There's no rubbing or marking your frame, there's no excess pressure on your carbon drop-outs either, and no bottle cages or cables in the way. As long as you don't have mud-guards you're good to go and your bike will love you for it. FRAME MOUNTED CARRIERS
As the name suggests, frame mounted carriers secure your bike by the frame, they have some of the same advantages as front wheel mounted carriers, they're easy to load and unload and you don't have to remove the front wheel.
The main disadvantage of frame mount carriers is that the slight movement of the bike when travelling can cause damage to carbon or sensitive finishes on your frame. Unusual shaped frames can also have some difficulty to fit or may not fit at all. This makes it unsuitable for some types of bikes out of the box. Some manufacturers like Thule make accessories so that you can carry carbon frame bikes on your frame mount carrier without worrying and adapters to be able to carry unusual frame designs.
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