Our RV Bike Rack

I love to Bike. It's one of my favorite things to do when camping. The only problem was how do we take our bikes with us when we camp? For the first year, we transported our bikes in the back bed of our tow vehicle pick up truck, but it wasn't the best place to transport bikes. First off, then took up allot of the space in the bed, and secondly, they would get bounced around and I was afraid that the bike peddles would tear up the wheel spokes. Their had to be a better way.

I already had a Thule bike rack carrier that would fit a 2 inch hitch receiver. It's the standard way that I would transport the bikes with the pick up truck when the RV was not on the hitch. But with the RV in the hitch receiver, that no longer seem possible. I wanted to use the thule bike carrier with the new solution.

The first thing that I tried was to buy a 2 inch hitch reciever that bolts on the RV back bumper. I had been warned in advance that the back bumper was to light to take this, and they were right. On our first trip I lost on of the end caps and almost lost another do to the heavy flexing of the back bumper, and that was with only 2 bikes on the bike rack. Clearly the hitch reciver clamped to the back bumper was NOT the way to go.

The 2nd year I decided to get serious about it. We bought a steel clamp on hitch that you bolt or weld to the frame of the travel trailer. We bought this through LaGrande RV and had them do the work of welding it onto the RV frame. The 2 inch hitch receiver cost us $168.00 and about another $160 to weld it on. I was very happy with the work that LaGrande did for us.

In the above picture you can see how the cross member (that in the middle has the 2 inch receiver box in it) is welded to the frame of the RV. Travel Star's have a very beefy box frame, so this is a very secure attachment.

From the bottom looking up, you can see how the cross member holds the hitch receiver box. Lagrande did a great job positioning this so that it was just below the back bumper. This actually has the Thule bike rack inserted into the hitch receiver. The old camp on hitch receiver is still bolted to the back bumper (and unused).

Click on the picture to enlarge. This shows the attachment point where it's welded to the frame. You can't see it in the thumbnail, but if you click on the picture in the high res picture I have labeled the various parts that you are looking at so you can see how it was positioned. The V on the bottom of the frame I am told by LaGrande is so that if the RV wheels go into a low spot in the pavement, that the bumper would not be tore off the RV by hitting the pavement, but rather that the V on the frame would bottom out first.

Another view of the hitch receiver. The bolts hanging down in the foreground are actually from the bolt to bumper hitch receiver that is not used anymore. Remind me to remove it one of these days.

These shots shows the position of the hitch receiver and the black tank (toilet waste holding tank) on the RV. I told LaGrande that I wanted some space between the inside of the hitch receiver and the black tank, as I didn't want the tank to chafe a hole through it. As you can see, there's plenty of space between the two. No worries. The wires attached to bolts on the tank are part of the tank sensor system to determine how full the tank is.

Another view of the attachment weld. This 2 inch receiver is not coming off.