rhm

Title says it all. I have too many bikes and though I do intend to sell many, I will still need to store the remaining ones in the least possible space.

I'm thinking two rows of hooks, reach hook to hold one bike by its front wheel, some higher up, some lower, so the handlebars don't interfere. Who's tried that? Did it work? Got a better idea?

randyjawa 

All the same height, one pointing up the next pointing down and with handlebars swung or even not, seems to optimize space well...

BFisher

Same idea as Randy's, my wife got me a Monkey Bars bike rack from Amazon. Using hooks to hang by the wheels, you can fit six bikes in four feet of space, staggering them facing upwards and downwards. It works well.

79pmooney

I've been doing that for the past 30 years. Hooks are 66" and 83" inches off the floor, 15" apart and set 17" out from the wall. Makes getting bikes down and returning them after hard rides really easy. Wheelie the bike under the hook, put a thigh into the seat and lift the bars and done. I put 14" high shelves under the higher bikes that I can slide boxes of bike stuff under. Hooks are bent flatbar (with old innertube wrapping to protect the rims) from Home Depot bolted or lag screwed to a 2x4 lag screwed to the garage overhead. Pretty simple. Put it up 20 years ago and have done nothing since. If I moved, I take the 2x4 and hooks, drill new holes to match the new overhead and install.

You can go closer with the bikes but at the expense of ease. All my bikes are drop bar and always have been so I cannot speak for straight bars and other handlebar options.

Ben

rhm

That sounds like what I want to do. Got a photo, by any chance? I

tried hanging them rear wheel up once, and found that difficult to manage, but for the less frequently ridden bikes that might not be an issue.

dddd

You can support a pipe with threaded hardware-store hooks spaced 32" apart, and use sliding hooks to support the bikes spaced at whatever distance you prefer.

Here I've gone to the limit of easy egress/ingress with 22 road bikes along a 17" wall, with bikes pointing alternatingly up and down.

Note that in this photo the ceiling is only 6'5" high, so only enough floor space under the bikes for some bags of tires laid flat.

Lascauxcaveman 

I'm losing my big space at work pretty soon, so this is a great thread for me.

I'm even thinking of ... ... selling some of my bikes!

Hobbiano 

Did you make the sliding hooks? I can't make out how they hook on to the rims in the photo. Are the padded? Do you remove the pedals?

SurferRosa

What??!!

Sadness!

Lemond1985

I will etch that figure into my mind, 17 feet of wall, equals 22 road bikes. Then also about a 3 foot setback from the wall.

I'm also curious about the sliding hooks, and how they work. Homemade?

fietsbob

rubbermaid fast tracks storage will offer a sliding after hanging, and so as I understand , lets you move

the spacing, tighter, or more separated , say, to take down the bike you want to use..

the bike hooks

dddd

Yes, I decided early on to make my own hooks, but this was before I found and tested some usable hooks that sell for 6/$1 at our local Dollar store!

I first asked the local ironworks to make me a prototype hook, but when they used 3/8" rod that was strong enough for a motorcycle I decided that I needed to first test out what was the minimum safe rod diameter.
It turns out that the bend radius is a huge determinant of how thick that the rod stock needs to be!

So to make my test hooks, I needed to fashion a simple fixture, but having done this I immediately realized that I could easily make my own batch of hooks. I bought 1/4" steel strip from Home Depot to make my bending fixture, I included a roller for the driver peg, used the edge of a bolt head for the stationary anchor peg grip and used a stack of fender washers as a mandrel for the bend radius.

It was a fun project, outlined in pictures below. It was originally done as a lowest-cost project designed to be free-standing and thus using a much thicker steel pipe. I later needed to hang the bikes in the basement room of a newer house that I moved to, so I located suitable threaded hooks that could snap onto a thinner 1/2" iron pipe that the local plumbing outfit cut for me to the 17' length.

79pmooney

Sorry, rhm, I am (intentionally) staying photo illiterate. One detail that I did not mention above is that I use 1 x 1/8 flatbar. Fairly stiff stuff. I do the bends in a bench vise. Once bolted to the overhead 2x4, they are rather stiff, even the ones that hang down most of two feet. Makes engaging the front wheel a lot easier; a real blessing after hard rides. (I hang the heavy bikes low, light high.)

xiaoman1 

Hi, these are all great ideas, I would use a rectangular tube instead of a pipe ( LS on the Y-axis) because of its strength and if possible some support in the middle to decrease bending/deflection...same with wood.
I would hate to wake up in the morning to see that the pipe gave way and all of my biles in a pile on the floor.
Best, Ben

mechanicmatt

I just recently tackled such a project and was able to get 15 bikes and 2 frames in an area that was 79" x 120" but I had nearly 10ft of wall to play with. I used all screw style hooks. You will need to decide if you want to store the bikes with handles normal or at 90o of the bike. If they are normal 14" centers apart seems to keep everything apart well enough to get things up and down, with handlebars turned you can get that to 10". Also I like to offset the bikes by 12" up and down between hooks, and hang the bike opposite direction of each other like the others have suggested here.

mechanicmatt

My new shop in progress, 14" centers, 12" offset on the far wall. Room for a frame to hand on each side. Bikes on the side walls are hung at 14 inch centers, same height, bikes hung opposite ways. Hang everything as high as you can and you can fit bikes between the hung bikes on the floor. Also at 14" centers there is definitely room for more frames between the bikes if needed.

mechanicmatt

Old shop, all bikes facing up. 12" centers, 12" offset. Bikes bumped into each other a lot.

dddd

Iron pipe doesn't just "give way" in "creep-yield" fashion from any sort of static loading, so even if you came back 100 years later, the "bow" in the pipe supported at it's ends would not have changed. Aluminum is another story, unless it is highly processed as is Maxtal.

The free-standing fixture with 1-1/2" iron pipe was loaded as shown (for testing purposes only) with the heaviest 14 bikes I could find to throw on it. It was then cycled up and down at sympathetic frequency at a large displacement, to test it before putting any good bikes on it.

The hook-supported 1/2" iron pipe was tested by myself and a bigger contractor buddy with each of us hanging from adjacent 32" spans.
Also each threaded hook was rated at 140 lbs iir, which we easily exceeded without failure and without any sign of yielding.
Note the two closer-spaced hooks at the far end of the pipe, where I hang my Schwinns!

Lemond1985

I had an idea that maybe a garment rack could be modified to hang up bikes on. Too small? Maybe the height could be increased a foot or so.



Another idea I had was a small kid's swingset might also might be adapted.

I am definitely gonna build one of these, but am looking for a way to adapt something that already exists.

unterhausen

I was a little interested in the Rockler roller track until I found out you can only get track in 4' lengths https://www.rockler.com/4-tracks-for...g-track-system. A barn door track would work well too, but not the designer style that costs $$$. Have to make your own hooks though

dddd

I can buy this 6-pack of hooks for $1 at a local 99 Cents Only store. These are only 5/32" or 4mm thick, versus the 3/16" steel rod I used for most of my hooks.

But, the bend radius is appropriate to the metal thickness such that a weighty road bike can be hung from these.
They are easily twisted 90-degrees for sliding along a 1/2" iron pipe that is more like 7/8" diameter OD.

Compared to the ones I made, these won't support as wide of a wheel or as heavy a bike, but again these will work for road bikes.
Shown unwrapped at center in bottom photo.

xiaoman1 

You are correct, much depends on how the ends and columns/posts are anchored and how the pipe is secured to them.., if there is enough bending (deflection) in the pipe and the ends are not secured they can slip out. etc.
If all is equal a beam or a rectangular tube is stronger than a pipe (gas pipe may be resist bending better than galvanized), diagonal bracing is another story.
Best, Ben

Reynolds 

As my ceiling is too high, I used A/C brackets to hold a pipe with sliding hooks, works OK.

dddd

You wouldn't believe the number of failure points that I identified after I built the wooden upright hanging bike fixture with the 1.5" iron pipe.

There was the problem with the legs splaying, so I used cords/ropes to complete and cross the "A" supports (though I didn't much need these when it rested on carpet, indoors).
I also worried about the threaded ends of the pipes slipping out of the A-frames, so added thick Zip-ties over the threads.
I then worried that the wood might split length-wise, so wrapped the crossing point of the struts with multiple wraps of twine.
Lastly I worried about the thing slumping over to either end/side, so as shown I "wedged" the top of the structure between two walls.

Things seem so simple until you actually make them! Through it all, I did manage to stick to a tight budget.

1simplexnut

ran out of wall space !
Need to build a shed !