lol @Tvandelinder maybe you need a new bike now.
I am glad to have found this thread as I am starting to think about how to travel with a bike as I have a short trip next month and will be hoping to rent a bike for a day to do a group ride.
However, if I plan to travel more and ride, which I hope to, investing in a bag and also a seasucker seems like a good idea (as getting the bike bag in a vehicle is not practical).
Hopefully there is some good info in this forum on bags too as I have no idea what to look for, soft vs hard case, features, …
Glad your trip and transport was a successful one.
Whats the groups advice on SeaSucker’s in the winter? I’ve only used mine a few times - to do so I kept the sucker indoors overnight so it wouldn’t become too cold (shrug) and then used some warm water to remove the frost from the roof / window of the car before applying. Anyone have other experince or tips
They should list an operating temp range in their specs and/or instructions.
The rubber in the vacuum pads will harden to a point in the cold where they may not seal as well and can lose coefficient of friction.
The internal U-Cop that provides the main seal in the vacuum pump can also harden to a point of potential leaks.
Either one of those can result in a leak and failure.
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Has anyone tried… using the rear wheel holder to carry skis on the roof of a car? I have two of the rear wheel mounts and only 1 pair of skis. I wonder what would happen if I were to velcro the skis onto these mounts. Think they would fall off? Of course, only one way to find out, but I thought I’d ask here in case I’m being stupid and I haven’t really tested the limits of the velcro
I’ve done that on the older, flat versions of the wheel holders. It works without a problem if you put one in front of the bindings and another one behind the bindings.
Overall i’m very pleased with my Seasucker Bomber rack. I’ve had it since about 2013 and taken multiple trips at highway speeds for long hours with and without crosswinds. It even survived a drive into the garage with bikes on the roof. I had to replace couple of straps but the bikes survived with only a cosmetic damage and couple of roof scratches.
My only complaint is that i’ve replaced about 4 pumps total by now as they tend to get brittle over time and the pump connection to the body disintegrates.
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I’ve used mine for a 1800km drive when it was -35 and it wasn’t an issue.
I made sure it was warm before putting it on of course. No water… It would have frozen as soon as it touched the roof panel anyway. I just gave it a vigorous buffing with a microfiber cloth to make sure there was no snow or ice on the roof.
It made me nervous but the bike and rack made it.
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Hey guys!
I wanted to drag this back up and share my experience with building my own version of a vacuum mount!
I want to start off by saying that I had an amazing experience building this and it was rather fun!
So here it goes;
Why did I build my own mount?
I was recently convinced by my wife to get a pop up camper as our boys love camping so much, her argument was that we could go camping and do most of the mountain bike races within reasonable distance. I was not going to argue with this, as it means I get to race more haha.
SO, not wanting to invest much money into the setup I got something that could be pulled by my wifes minivan.
This is where the troubles started, the model we wanted was not offered with any type of top rack for “toys” and after looking for weeks and weeks and talking to the manufacture there was not many options to be had for it.
This means I could - go custom route and put my own bar/rack solution on the top. The issue here is the camper is a '24 model and that would void the roof warranty on the unit. I also read numerus horror stories about the roofs leaking when you start messing with them.
The next solution was to re-enforce the frame and add a rear bumper to the unit for my normal bike rack. You can take a guess at why I didnt want to do this - It voids the frame warranty and honestly I was getting a little worried about adding that much weight behind the pop-up too and feared some load/sway factors on the little van that could.
So, that lead me to a vacuum mount!
Well guess what, the roof looks like this;
After talking with SeaSucker, it was painfully obvious they did not have anything to offer for me. I read through this thread and thought, well lets maybe make one. I ultimately went with a Woods Power-Grip product.
I have to tell you, these hand vacuums ARE SO NICE!
I worked with resident and amazing engineer @mcneese.chad and we determined to test a 8" cup and I tested (3) different pads on this textured surface. I would ultimately end up with a N4950TS
When the right pad was realized - it blew my mind at how well it gripped/held onto the roof. In my testing the hand vacuum held for over 24-hours without letting any air escape. This was an amazing feat for me!
The next phase/part was to machine an actual plate/mount again for the sucker cup. Once again, an amazing @mcneese.chad gave some awesome input on this!
This resulted in a prototype plate that looks as so
Awesome!
The next step was to figure out how to mount the flurry of bikes I had in my stable, so I decided to go with a multi adapting fork block from Amazon. This unit allowed me to fit everything from my fat-bike all the way to a old QR road bike I had. I will forewarn however, the inserts will not stay in the block while traveling if you do not have a bike on, so be sure to pull them.
Now that everything was engineered and machined, it was time for assembly
Then it was the final test on the roof itself.
I am so glad that I went this route! I am going to make a rear wheel one now (maybe I will see how much it bounces around first 
I intend to make 2-3 more of these for my camper so I can take all of the family bikes with us. The best part is, I can pop one off and put it on top of the van if we need to travel to a destination ride.
These are such cool/innovative ideas and I really need to give a huge thank you to Chad for all his help on this project.
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Very cool.
Those Woods cups are pretty powerful. But… As someone who has used them for their original purpose daily I’d want some redundancy. It’s why Seasuckers have at least two cups.
I’ve dropped a couple pieces of glass because the vacuum failed for whatever reason. It’s very rare, especially if you start with a good seal, but the risk of losing a bike is high if it does. Most failures I’ve had were because of the glass not the vacuum. With a surface that doesn’t shatter this is less likely however.
I’d for sure have still have one for the rear though. If that front one ever released for any reason your bike is gonzo.
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Much appreciated feedback!
I intend to get a rear one built when I can. I was actually on my way to post on this thread that it took 52-hours before the current suction cup released enough pressure to show a low pressure warning. That is super impressive and re-assuring to myself.
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