

A bike rack may be free standing or it may be securely attached to the ground or some stationary object such as a building.
BICYCLE STANDS FOR FREE
Not good.White cycles for free use in Hoge Veluwe National Park, the NetherlandsĪ bicycle parking rack, usually shortened to bike rack and also called a bicycle stand, is a device to which bicycles can be securely attached for parking purposes. Also, one consistent complaint by Amazon reviewers about both of these models was that the angle of the hooks’ prongs didn’t grasp their bikes securely enough and they sometimes slipped off. They have only one rope each, not two, which means your bike won’t stay level while you’re raising it.

However, Gear Up has discontinued the Deluxe Hoist and now sells only a single-rope version, which resembles the Racor Bike Lift and the Rad Sportz Easy Bike Lift, the other hoists we tested. Of the three we tested, the only one we would’ve recommended was Gear Up’s Up and Away Deluxe Hoist System, which had a dual-rope design: One rope supported the front of the bike and a separate rope supported the rear, making lifting and lowering the bike easier and keeping the bike level. However, most of these systems are relatively expensive and hard to install, and they’re usable only if you have really, really high ceilings. Then, one pair of prongs holds the handlebars on either side of the stem and the other pair hooks into the bottom of the saddle.
BICYCLE STANDS INSTALL
With such a system, you install two ceiling mounts roughly the same distance apart as your handlebars and saddle. “But if the brakes have been properly bled and have no leaks,” he added, “then pumping the brake lever a bunch of times should bring the brake function back.” Some of us have experienced this phenomenon with bikes that were hung vertically too, so if you decide to store your bike this way, make sure your brakes work before pedaling off!Ī few companies sell hoist, or ropes-and-pulleys, systems for overhead bike storage. I do make sure that the hook is not leaning against a spoke or a valve stem.” The only bike-storage warning we did get came from Zinn, who pointed out that if you hang a bike with hydraulic brakes upside down, an air bubble could find its way into the rear caliper, and the first time you try to brake, you won’t stop.

“It is certainly something I worried about long ago, but I’ve never seen any issue with it, and I’ve hung a lot of bikes up by their super-expensive carbon rims. “I have been hanging innumerable bikes this way for decades, and have yet to see any damage from it,” Zinn told me. One pleasant surprise is that our bike experts agreed unanimously that hanging a bike by its front wheel won’t hurt the wheel. (Think twice, though, if you have hydraulic brakes. I checked in with Lennard Zinn (a frame builder who literally wrote the book on bike repair), David Kendall at Calfee Design (this shop is the last resort for anyone with a busted-up carbon bike), and Ric Hjertberg at Wheel Fanatyk (where you can find anything you’d need to build wheels, from finely wrought spokes to well-tuned advice) to get their opinions on storage options-and to make sure that it is, in fact, okay to hang a bike by its front wheel, even if the rim is made of expensive and easily damaged carbon.
BICYCLE STANDS MANUAL
I read Eben Weiss’s The Ultimate Bicycle Owner’s Manual to see what the opinionated Bike Snob NYC (Weiss’s nom de guerre) had to say on the topic. I interviewed Chris Hodney, who works with Hacker Architects in Portland, Oregon, another cycling-mad city, and has made a specialty of evaluating bicycle storage for apartments and office buildings.

The Michelangelo even has a couple of extra hooks for accessories, so you have somewhere other than your handlebars to hang your helmet.įor this review, I polled cyclists on my commute group’s email list (which numbers more than 3,000) in San Francisco-a place where bike infrastructure is expanding but individual living spaces are shrinking-about how they keep their bikes both safe and out of the way. Repositioning the arms (don’t do this while a bike is on the rack!) is simply a matter of twisting them until they move freely-here, you’ll need no tools at all, which means that this rack is also easier than all the others to adjust once assembled. The support arms that hold up the bikes on the Michelangelo are movable, allowing the stand to handle bikes with sloping top tubes or complex full-suspension frames. Plus, its ladderlike frame is made of slender but tough steel tubing that keeps the stand from dominating your interior-decorating scheme. It’s also low-impact, requiring a grand total of one screw to attach it to the wall-and although the directions strongly recommend attaching the stand to the wall, many people we spoke to didn’t bother at all and never had any problems (mind your earthquakes!). The Michelangelo was easier to assemble than all the other options we tested, requiring only a Phillips screwdriver and a drill.
