Why You Should Always Strap Your Wheels on a Roof Rack

cycling, mountain biking | UltraRob | Monday, May 28th, 2007 at 9:26 pm

You should always strap your wheels when you but your bike on a roof rack. Depending on what brand and style of bike mount you have, you generally either take the front wheel off and attache the fork or you leave the front wheel on and an arm attaches to your bike frame. Then there are straps to fasten your rear wheel or both wheels depending on the style.

You may think it’s too much bother to fasten the wheel straps. I always try to make sure they’re strapped. On our drive to Grand Junction to ride the Kokopelli Trail, I was reminded of why I do. I was cruising along on I-70 just west of Avon going about 80 mph. I heard a thunk on the roof. It’s never a sound you want to hear with bikes on the roof.

I quickly got off on the shoulder and stopped. I got out and Kent’s bike was leaning over about 60 degrees. Kent likes to jump off big drops and ride technical stuff. I’m not sure I’d quite call his bike a freeride bike but it’s closer to that than a XC race bike. It was a bit of a stretch to get the arm on my Thule Big Mouth mount to attach to his downtube. The jaw didn’t close as far as it does on my bike but I didn’t think more about it.

What I didn’t know was the bolt that holds the tray to the part that attaches to the front bar had come loose. It’s probably been 3-4 years since I put it together. The wind pressure from driving had caused the tray and bike to slide back so the jaw no longer reached the frame. Even though the jaw wasn’t totally shut when I had put it on I couldn’t see how the bike could fall over. I also never thought it would slide back and out of the jaw. If it wasn’t for the wheel straps, Kent’s bike would have been bouncing down I-70 at 80 mph.

I used to fork mount my Tommasini road bike. A few years ago, I had the fork come out of the mount a little farther west on I-70. It actually came out twice before I got the Big Mouth. The problem was the fork dropouts are chromed with no “lawyer tab”. No matter how tight I tightened the fork mount, the fork would slower work its way out. Both times it happened to my Tommasini, the rear wheel strap kept the bike on the roof instead of falling on the highway.

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