Monday, May 27, 2024

Slider bike storage for van

 


We have a 2007 Dodge Sprinter, 144" wheelbase, converted to a camper van. We are bike riders, and we're often bringing bikes with us on road rips, or using the van to travel to a place where we will ride bikes. Having the bikes inside the van, outside of view is very useful; the bikes are better protected from theft, and they don't get rained on, get road spray, get dirty, or bleached by the sun. We have a bed platform in the van that is 38.5" from the floor to its underside, a cabinet on the driver side for water system and storage, and a rear bench seat with tracks installed 62" from the rear-most part of the bracket to the rear sill of the floor. The bench seat location is not stock, the Mercedes seat brackets were installed by Van Specialties in a location appropriate for through-frame access to attach the brackets. A two-seat Sprinter bench is installed, and a Serg Supply fridge cabinet is also a factor in how the bicycles must fit. There are seats with seat belts for four people in the van, so four bikes are the usual maximum we might bring. On our last long trip, we each brought a mountain bike and a gravel bike; two people, four bikes. 

An L and XL MTB, and an L and XL gravel bike

The final parameter is the passenger wheel well. At some point I'll likely add some sort of storage on the passenger side, bur for now it's a soft fabric storage system that hangs from some l-track. These are the parameters within which the bikes must fit. They necessarily have to have front wheels removed, as the available room for bikes is limited. I had formerly used thru-axle bike mounts like these, mounted on 6061 0.190" (3/16") aluminum plate with holes suitable for studs in l-track, mounted horizontally to the floor, front and rear in the "garage" area. 

How we used to do it.

It worked OK, but to do a nose-to-tail (alternating forward and backward) arrangement of bikes, to get more bikes in the space meant really awkward crawling into the garage space, or even more awkward shoving of the bikes, without using the fork mounts. The wheels would be loose, and their sharp rotors had to be kept away from the bikes, or else they'd damage frames, paint, could cut hydraulic hoses. It was not ideal. Having bikes loose in the garage area became more and more of a standard pattern. 

More of how we used to do it. Not good.

The alternative was to store bikes outside the van. I do have a Lolo racks six-bike hitch rack, which is pretty great; an easy way to move bikes. If I'm doing a mountain bike trip where we might use the van to shuttle people up to the top of a hill, like in Downieville, the Lolo rack makes a lot of sense. But it requires locking the bikes to the rack if we stop at a restaurant, keeping them in sight, and they can get rained on, etc.

Six-bike Lolo rack

I first saw the bike slider pattern on the internet, and immediately decided that I wanted to copy it. I'll put links to other people's solutions, and commercial offerings at the bottom of this post.

I ended up copying these two, primarily; Sliding Bike and Cargo Trays - Tim & Shannon L.T.D. and 2019 cargo bike hauler. I used the Unaka - Bike Thru Axle Fork Mount. They are expensive, and the price has gone up, but they're the best solution for the limited space I have to work with. I like their ability to work with both l-track and 80/20, and that they come with spacers to adjust handlebar height.

My skills are pretty average. I built this with hand tools, using an old folding picnic table as my work bench. I spent some time modeling how the bikes would fit on my garage floor, then taping the area to determine footprint, and then repeating it in the van. 



For a long time I was fairly certain that the longer mountain bikes would mean we couldn't have the slider bike storage and the rear bench. I was contemplating replacing the Mercedes two-person bench with a hand-made wooden or 80/20 bench, which would clear the bikes, give me storage (and heater) opportunities, but not have seat belts. I eventually found that if kept the longest bike to the passenger side of the bench, removed the plastic rear cover on the Mercedes bench seat, and avoided the seat belt retraction units with the bikes' tires, everything just fit. It is a bit of a puzzle; not much room, but XL and L mountain bikes and XL and L gravel bikes fit, with wheels off, strapped to forks or frames with Voile straps.

Like Tim & Shannon, I used Fulterer FR5400L drawer slides I got from Amazon, 60" in my case, and matching Fulterer brackets, which I got from Ovis. That's the longest slide they make, in that pattern. They have a 450lb rating, which I'd never reach with this design, unless people stood or sat on the slide, and I don't want that to happen. (More on that below, where I talk about attachment to the van.) Ovis has a PDF which shows you which brackets you need, and each bracket's page has a PDF which shows you their installation, depending on the length of the slide. More here. The brackets come with the necessary hex button-head metric bolts, washers and nylon locking nuts. Assembly is a bit finicky; the slides are made with square windows for bolt access. 

I also copied Tim & Shannon's use of aluminum plate. I wanted maximum clearance for the bikes, so thin, strong and stiff was important to me. I figured the 80/20 1" (1010) cross pieces, with a sufficient number (four) of fixed connections would ensure the platform didn't sag. This idea worked well, but the 80/20 does have one flaw that I didn't foresee; if I made the 80/20 the same width (38") as the plate, there is not enough of a gap between the relatively tall sides of the Fulterer slides to get the three-hole t-nuts into the slots in the 80/20, meaning the t-nuts have to be installed before the 80/20 pieces are attached to the aluminum plate.

I designed this slide to have two different 80/20 1010 sections on either end, so that I had flexibility to stagger bike mounts, and so that I had side-to-side flexibility as well. I could have used l-track, and that might have been a better design. I'd have been able to drop in a new mount point, with lateral positioning flexibility, where with the current design I am either limited to 3287 1/4-20 Triple Slide-in Economy T-Nuts I already installed, or I have to remove the 80/20 1010 segments to install additional t-nuts. This is challenging, because the way I attached the 80/20 sections is ungainly. I drilled four holes, roughly equidistant for each 80/20 cross member, using a 1/4" bit, then used a 1/2" countersink (82ยบ) bit to produce a countersink, (there's a rule of thumb out there for countersink bit sizes) then attached the cross members with 1/2" flat-head 1/4-20 bolts to 3204 10 Series 1/4-20 Steel Standard Slide in T-Nuts in the underside of each cross member. 






I only had maybe 1/4" of clearance between the floor and the underside of the aluminum plate, so I didn't want any nuts or bolts occupying that space, thus the countersunk flat-head bolts on the underside. As it is, my XL gravel bike is a squeeze to get in and out; the saddle's foam gets deformed by the ribs on the underside of the bed panels. Hmm, maybe it needs a dropper. I have to drop the MTB seats.


The t-nuts float, so you have to have them aligned with the holes just right. Now imagine doing this with the slider already installed. I had to do that a few times, and it's only possible with the most rearward of the four cross members. Doing it for the ones at the forward end of the plate require I disconnect the brackets from the slides. Awkward.
 


I used blue thread locker to keep the bolts from coming loose. Were 1/2" bolts the right length? I don't know, but I can tell you I only got about two threads of engagement. What will happen in an accident? The cross members and bikes would probably come free, but be retained by the body of the van, or the rear seat. I somewhat arbitrarily chose 3" between the two 80/20 cross members, on either end of the plate. In hindsight, 4" might have been better. I made the holes with a hand drill - working on 60"x38" plate didn't give me the luxury of using a drill press, and the bit wandered, meaning I sometimes had four holes not in a perfect line. I did end up enlarging one or two of the holes with the next bit size up, to get the nuts & bolts engaged. Repeating this operation is really unpleasant, thus the possibility of l-track, but then how would you attach the l-track to the plate, without nuts or bolt heads impacting clearance between the plate and the floor? This solution works. 

I attached the slider assembly to the van using #12 x 1" stainless steel wood screws on the driver side, as the brackets ended up over the frame rail, and via 1.5" (IIRC, might have been longer or shorter) 1/4-20 stainless steel bolts through the body to fender washers and nylon lock nuts on the passenger side. I used the paperclip + magnet trick to ensure I was drilling through a safe place.


The Unaka fork mounts come with some hardware. I used flat-head, hex-head stainless 1/4-20 bolts, which require a 5/32" allen key. Big phillips head bolts work. After learning the hard way, I added a 5th Unaka fork mount to the slider, and some more three-hole t-nuts to the most rearward cross member, half-way through a road trip, rather than disassembling the whole thing to get a mount where I wanted it. The t-nuts are cheap - load two or three into each cross member, if you follow my design. 


I have all the Unaka fork mounts opening facing the rear of the vehicle; that works well for loading bikes. I have an assortment of different length 1/4-20 bolts, so that I can use the spacers to get the handlebars to not interfere with each other.  

I originally ordered the plate 60" x 40", but didn't account for how much width the Fulterer brackets would add. I had to have it cut down to 60 x 38" by a local sheet metal / HVAC business. The whole assembly just needs to be as wide as the fork mounts. It could be narrower. Since it can also be used for storing other items, I don't mind the width. I'll likely add l-track along the sides for tie downs. I had to cut two notches into the brackets on the driver side, to make room so that I could access the brackets that hold my water & storage cabinet to the floor. I cut a hole in the plate so that I could pull the slider out of the van and sweep all the dirt and debris from the bikes through the hole and onto the ground.

I'm happy with the finished product, and would do it again.





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