This info is very helpful as we will be purchasing a carrier immediately. Turns out the fork paint damage on my beautiful new bike was likely caused by the current carrier (Yakima hitch-mount swing away). Although we couldn't figure out how it could be happening, the person loading the carrier (rude to name him) has been extremely concerned about my bike and tried a new position yesterday resulting in nice scrapes on the back side of the frame. Best guess is even though they were loaded at the far ends of the 4-bike carrier, my bike was attacked by the other bike's brake lever. I will likely have to take Keven's advice to stop crying and put on clear nail polish and then cover with reflective tape. At this point I will be quite nicely reflecting on one side of the bike. Since I'm hoping to not continue the process and the carrier loader is trying to avoid being killed, looks like we will probably buy a new carrier immediately.
It kills me to see my mixtie hanging askew on the hanging racks (and why is only my bike getting scratched up?), especially when we add the 2 kiddo's bikes into the mix. I've considered the attachment to create the cross bar on my bike, but it seems like an accident waiting to happen. Somehow it seems a platform would be more "organized". We have other hanging carriers (quit using them because we replaced with a swing-away to have access to the back of the vehicles). It helped me to see the above comments and wanted to see if there are any updates that would be of use to us. After reading the above, I think I am right about the platform being maybe a little better for the mix of bikes and am a little leery of further experimentation with my bike on the hanging carrier. I don't think we could easily handle a roof mount and the roof top is reserved for a kayak anyway.. We drive a Subaru Outback and Jeep Grand Cherokee, moving the carrier back and forth. If we had a 4-bike carrier on, we probably wouldn't get out of our own driveway without scraping so raising the hitch up would probably be important. Most of the time it would be 2 bikes - standard road bike with fenders and my Cheviot. But we also need the option to bring along 2 bikes for young kids. I've been looking at the ones for 2 that accommodate an add-on for an additional 2. It would be most useful for it to be swing-away so we could easily access everything. It is important that we can secure the bikes well as they could be unattended out of sight sometimes (although we are careful about that). And loading/unloading shouldn't be an ordeal so we can it frequently - we have a mix of short (30 min to 1 hr) drives to start riding and long trips. I will look at all the recommendations above, but appreciate any updated input. Thanks. (I think my optimal solution is a diesel sprinter with 4 captains chairs and a fold-down sofa in the rear to seat 3 and sleep 2 as queen size bed, with plenty of storage space between sofa & captains chairs for neatly organized "equipment", partnered with a 23' toy hauler for more accommodations for a longer trip. I think we could make that work. Makes a new carrier look pretty inexpensive, even if unplanned) > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
