With the 3/4' spacers, my ladder rungs were within an 1/8' of the PVC. I used pieces of pipe insulation between the PVC tire holders and my ladder because the stand-off wasn't enough. The steel spacers used as stand-offs between the aluminum and the ladder brackets. You can buy this stuff in smaller packages at a hardware store. The bag of little, black bolt-end caps contains 100 pieces. This box would have paid for just about any other bike rack, but I do have pieces left over. Other clamps, like conduit, two-hole straps and pipe clamps, didn't do what I wanted, either:īox of 316 Marine Grade Stainless Steel hardware from McMaster-Carr (). Here's a clamp I rejected because it's way too small, it's cast pot metal that's easy to crack and the bore for the attaching threads didn't allow for a large enough bolt. It doesn't move and the force is distributed by the long clamps so the ladder isn't crimped. I did a chin-up on the top 2' angle aluminum. A piece of inner tube protects the ladder's powder coat and gives stiction.

These are the clamps I used for the ladder interface. I can load them by myself, with the aid of a 4 foot step ladder: The skewers' clamp handles will work, and I zip tied them tight, but it takes a little finagling and patience when loading. Larger, say 3', angle aluminum would cure this, but then you'd have another inch of aluminum to climb over when getting on the roof.

Some shaping of the aluminum, like cutting the aluminum edge back, might help. A design flaw is the restriction of the fork-mount skewer's flip-clamp handle against the angle aluminum. The ends of the PVC were coped to allow the Yakima fork-mount attachment. The PVC was heated and expanded for the rear tires' width using a heat gun and another piece of PVC as a shaper. I couldn't find what I wanted, so I cobbled together some 2' angle aluminum and 2' PVC, inspired by other designs from here and a Google.

Stainless steel standoffs home depot