PVC Bike Rack and Stand.

[JohnV]

I was asked to put the instructions to building the PVC bike stand that appears in the photo of my road bike, so here's what you will need to build it. You will need 12 feet of 3/4" Schedule 40 PVC. You can use Schedule 20, but since it isn't as stiff, it may not hold up your bike very well. Half inch PVC isn't going to be sturdy enough and one inch PVC will not allow you to get close enough to your wheels to hold up the bike. You will also need 8 ea. 3/4" elbows, 4 ea. 3/4" tees and 3 feet of 3/4" foam pipe insulation (optional but suggested).

o Cut 4 pieces of PVC 18" long. These will be used for the outside rails and the upper rails that will hold up the bike.

o Cut 4 pieces of PVC 5" long. These pieces will go between the corner elbows and the center tees.

o Without glueing any of the pieces, put together an 18" outer rail with the elbows, a 5" center piece and a tee to build the bottom portion of one side of the stand. I used petroleum jelly on the ends of the PCV pipe so that it slides in the elbows and tees without locking up and allows it to seat all the way into the fittings.

o Put together the top rail using an 18" piece of PVC and two elbows. Place the bottom part of the stand around your bike's front wheel while it is standing straight up and place the upper rail under the dropouts so that it just touches the dropouts and align it to the tees in the bottom section. You may need someone to help you here.

o Measure the distance from the center of the elbow to the center of top of the tee to get the distance for your risers. Mine were 10" for my 700c x 25 wheels. Yours should be in the same ballpark. You will need to cut 4 pieces of PVC to the length that you just measured. If you are going to use the foam insulation, put it on the pipe before you do your measuring as this will add about 1/4" to the measurement.

o Assemble the second half of the stand and measure the distance across your wheel from the left dropout to the right dropout.

o Place the two assembled pieces next to each other orienting them as they would be if holding up the bike and space them apart from inside of the left upper rail to the inside of the right upper rail with the measurement you just took.

o For starters, the two connecting pieces should be the distance from the face of one tee to the face of the other tee plus 1". You will need to play with the connecting pieces until you get them to the point of being able to place the bike in the stand and have the front wheel fit snugly in the rack.

At this point, you can either disassemble the bike rack to glue it all together or you can do as I did and use small sheet metal screws to hold all the pieces. I like the screws because I can adjust any of the pieces whenever I need to.

That's all there is to it. Now for the three bike rack for the back of a pickup truck. This is what it looks like in the back of my Nissan Frontier.

[attachment=1824]

I found the plans for the bike rack on the internet at this URL:

PVC Bike Rack. Select Articles>How To Do It>Truck Bed Bike Rack.

I had to modify mine to accept my wife's recumbent trike and also put the rings on the top of the rack to better hold the bike with. The bungie cords that I use are slotted rubber cords, 36" in length. Once a bike is in the rack, they go around the handlebars or head tube really nice since the slots make them very adjustable. The plans say to drill a hole in the back of the tees to hook the bunjie cord into but that didn't work very well. The plans are for a Ford F150 bed so you will have to modify the rack so that it fits in your truck bed. I had foam insulation on the rack as well, but the foam got messed up from the heat and rain and I took it off. Waiting to go to Home Depot this weekend to get some more.

[GeorgeET]

Very cool indeed.

I did not see any pcv work stands that I liked. For now I just hang my bike from rafter bike hooks in the garage with some rope.This allows me to adjust height by putting a loop on one end and threading through it and cinching when I get the right hight.
Than I can roll around it on my mechanics stool. :-)))

[JohnV]

I thought it was pretty neat when I first saw it on the net. I was looking for something that I could use where I didn't have to remove the front wheels every time I wanted to take my bikes somewhere to ride. Everything I saw for trucks required that the front wheel be removed. I also used screws on this rack rather than gluing it together so that the space between the uprights that hold the wheel can be adjusted from road to MTB tires without much of an effort. Plus the total cost of this rack was less than one of the wheel locks needed for the other types of truck racks. The cheapest I have seen them locally is around $30.00 each and this only cost me around $25.00 to make.

[Bill]

Ahhh very nice job!!! Thank you for posting the instructions. Looks like I have a couple things to work on this weekend .

[ILHitman]

I use one of these in my truck and one in the garage. They are easy and cheap to build. I also painted mine and put a few stickers on it.

[JohnV]

Quote:I use one of these in my truck and one in the garage.

I have actually built several of these. When I go to my riding area near my house, there are always people that have their bikes thrown in the back of their truck. Then they see my stand and start asking how I built it and what it cost. Eventually, I end up building them one if they are mechanically challenged. I charge them material plus $10.00 for the gas it takes to run up and get the material. As you said, they are very easy to build, and after doing a few, they become much easier.