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Camper Bike Racks: How to travel with bikes on a pop-up camper
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May 22, 2024
This video is about putting bike racks on a pop-up camper. Should you put them on the top of the camper, or install a hitch receive on the back bumper with a cargo rack or bike rack? This video explains Simon's personal experience with bike racks on campers. Brought to you by LakeHub. We are sharing the joy of lake life! Learn more at https://LakeHub.com
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0:00
What's up everybody it's Simon from LakeHub and today we're talking about
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campers and bikes and towing and hauling and long haul road trips. What in the
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world do you do with your bikes? That's my question because my kids are now
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coming to the age where they like to take their bikes everywhere and camping
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and kids and bikes that goes together like peanut butter and jelly you know
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what I mean? So I want that for them. We're going on a long haul road trip
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LakeHub tour of the south and I got a bed cover. I thought you know what if we
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can come up with a system and play Tetris in the back of the truck and put
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everybody's clothes into bins we can fit everything in and it's nice and
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organized I get the bed cover I got a hot deal on Craigslist kind of deal you
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know it's a it's it's gently loved but it does the trick right? It's a good deal
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Fits perfectly, installed great, kept the water out just like I planned but now
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what in the world do we do with the bikes because we usually pile everything in there and do whatever we have to right? I'm thinking you know what I've
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seen people out on the highway with racks on the back of their campers
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that's a brilliant idea. I'm gonna put a rack on the back of my camper. I have one
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of those cargo racks you know goes into a regular two inch receiver tow hitch
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seems like a great idea. So what do we do? I don't have a tow hitch and so what I
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did was I got a bolt on hitch. Now my first warning should have been that
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these are made for four inch bumpers and I have a two by three bumper and so I
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had to come up with this kind of lumber setup you know with two by fours four by
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fours and kind of a two by three and rig it up so that it would secure snugly to
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the bumper. Well I did that and dry fit everything looked and felt okay. It kind
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of flexed the bumper just a little bit you know without any weight and I thought
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well you know I can run some straps up over the top of the of the of the camper
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and and strap it down to the frame on the front you know towards the tongue and that'll hold all the weight up you know. It seemed like engineering wise it
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seemed like that would work and it did you know until it didn't. Until a handy
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trucker, until a friendly trucker on the interstate did the old roll down his
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window and said the bikes the bikes and we pulled over right away we found out
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that one of the straps broke. Not the straps that went over the top but one of
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the straps that I had kind of tied around the spare tire holder had broken
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and so and the bumper was flexing it was too much weight and so the dry fit
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seemed okay but out and out in the wild out in reality man this thing was going
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like this. Add to that once again I've got a little camper here man all that
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weight on the back end was fishtail city. A little bit of wind and we're whoo and
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we got the wobbles and we're coming out of it. Go up over a hill too fast come
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down the hill too fast starting to wobble got a whoop out of it right so
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not a great situation did not feel safe so after the first day I mean we just
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went empty cargo rack threw the bikes on top and called it good. So so far with a
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small camper this is the way to go I mean it took the wind and rain you know
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we went through a couple storms we're on about I'd say we're over a thousand
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miles on this trip so far and we've seen some weather okay the bikes they're
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getting rained on pretty good you know so it's not ideal so first of all I want
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to hear what y'all do what your solutions are second of all I want to
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tell you that on a short camper I will never ever put anything on the back of
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it ever again it was way too unsafe way and way unsafe now if you've got a big
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camper you've got a bunkhouse or something like that or like you know two
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or three axle you know Cabo or fifth wheel all that kind of stuff those
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things have have heavy-duty bumpers and those are what those extra hitches are
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made for those are not made for towing okay it's two u-bolts it's definitely
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not what made for towing it's only made for cargo I've seen people with kayaks
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you know it's like carrying kayaks and some crazy configuration you know bikes
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and extra coolers and all kinds of crazy stuff that you don't want to take inside
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I guess this camper seemed like the pretty big seems like you'd be able to
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take everything inside okay but you know muddy tires and whatnot grease I guess
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you don't want that knocking around right so if you've got a big camper then
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that's a brilliant idea it's brilliant if you've got a little camper don't do
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it friends but I really do I really want to hear what you have to say about this
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and about what you're doing out on the open road because I don't want to put a
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rack on top of my truck and I don't want to mess with the bed cover I don't want
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to put a rack on the roof because I've torn apart a roof of a pop-up camper and
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realize it's built with one by twos yeah that's right you don't want to put you
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don't want to mount anything on top of this camper now I'm okay with with with
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this one-piece skin it's sturdy enough with the insulation and the framing
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everything like that but mounting flat out so there's my two cents on hauling
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bikes on pop-up campers I'd love to hear what you have to say about it I'm Simon
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from Lycub and we'll see you next time hopefully with a better idea
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