How To Carry A Bicycle On A Motorcycle?

Carrying your bicycle on your motorcycle will not be an easy task, especially given that the market doesn’t offer any mount that you can purchase and install on your motorbike. So, depending on the bike model you’re riding, you’ll need to customize the mounting system for yourself. Although the mounting system doesn’t depend heavily on the bike, sometimes you may need to carry out minor tweaks.

Then again, multiple types of mounting systems may or may not suit your bike. In this article, we’ll take a look at all the best possible mounting solutions that’ll help you carry a bicycle on a motorcycle. But before that, let’s find out which type of motorbike will be more suitable for carrying a bicycle.

Which Type of Motorcycle is More Suited for Carrying a Bicycle?

You can divide motorbikes into two types in general, there are the regular ones and the scooters. Although many people hate scooters, it’s undeniable that scooters are much more suitable for carrying bicycles. Why?

Well, scooters don’t offer as much as regular motorbikes in terms of aerodynamics and raw power. However, these are still capable enough to carry an entire bike. What makes these superior to regular bikes is their overall balance and space. Scooters obviously offer more space than regular motorcycles, and this makes them much more comfortable. Plus, thanks to their flat construction, balancing the bike that you’ll be carrying becomes much easier on them.

That said, no matter which type of motorbike you’ll be riding, the key is finding the right mounting system for yourself. At the end of the day, we all have preferences, and in this article, we’ll share appropriate solutions that’ll be helpful for all.

Bicycle Mounting System for Motorbikes

There are different variations of regular motorcycles on the market. While some of them come with a long, flat backseat, most modern motorbikes offer a curved and short backseat to make the bike more aerodynamic.

In this case, you’ll need to extend the size of the backseat to provide an appropriate length for your bike. You can either do that horizontally across the length of your motorcycle, which will extend the effective length of your bike, or you can do that vertically, which will extend the effective width of your bike.

Now, while both of these methods work pretty well, we highly recommend increasing the length of your motorcycle horizontally. If you extend the effective width of your bike, you’ll be facing a ton of problems in maneuvering your bike. On the other hand, if you extend the effective length, you won’t be facing any difficulty at all.

Irrespective of whether you have a regular motorcycle or a scooter, the following method can be applied.

DIY Bicycle Carrier Your Motorbike

To mount the bicycle horizontally on your motorbike, you’ll have to follow the steps described in this section.

Get started with a thin yet sturdy block of wood that spans a meter in length and is about as wide as the rear seat of the bike itself. Now, you can make it longer than a meter, but we usually recommend sticking to a meter as many cities and states put a bar on how much you can extend the effective length of your motorbike.

So, if this limit is even lower in your region, then you better keep an eye out for that and adjust accordingly. Although the wood has to be lightweight and as thin as possible, at least make sure that it won’t break after mounting the bicycle.

Now, you’ll need to get a clamp that’ll be holding down the fork of your bicycle, as you’ll be removing the front wheel. Carrying the bicycle will be impossible if you don’t remove the front wheel, so this is important to note. We highly recommend the MBP Alloy fork as it comes with a quick release. Sure, you can make a clamp for yourself, but we guarantee it’ll be a pain to operate.

On the base of the wooden block, on the rear seat side, you’ll have to mount two-wheel clamps. We recommend these HOMEE Bike Racks as they offer great value for money and comes with all the necessary mounting hardware. You may want to add some padding to the bottom of these racks to decrease the vibration and overall noise of the package.

Now, you’ll need to put off both the wheels of the bicycle that you’ll be carrying. After that, install the clamp on the wooden board. To do this, you may want to add a few extra pieces of board underneath the clamp because that will add some extra housing to screw the clamps in.

Once you’re done installing the clamp, just mount the fork of the bicycle into it. Make sure it’s tight and placed properly. Now, you have to place a few blocks of wood to elevate one of the bike racks in such a way that you can slot the chainstay into it. Add some padding underneath this rack as well. You can do this with only one rack, but if you want to balance the bike properly, we recommend using two racks for slotting on both sides of the chainstay.

We also recommend putting some padding on the steel bars of the racks, as that will make sure the bike snugs into the slot nicely. It will hold them down tighter, and it’ll also keep the bicycle’s frame from getting scratched.

Next up, you’ll need to mount the wooden block on the bike itself. This will vary depending on the type of rear rack your bike offers. Now we’ll discuss one simple trick that can be applied to all sorts of back racks.

You need to get yourself a metal block that offers screw holes. Take one or two blocks of wood to place on the rear rack, place the wooden block that you’ve prepared on top of the blocks, and hold the metal block underneath the rack. Now, place the wooden block properly and screw all the blocks together. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, but it can be applied to all types of racks, and it can allow you to hold your bicycle properly.

This system is perfect for regular bikes as it can be installed on any type of rear rack, can be made from scratch without any welding, and the components can either be bought or made from scraps.

Conclusion

So, scooters are generally more suitable for carrying bicycles due to their overall balance and space. Another good way is to extend the size of the backseat horizontally. A DIY wooden block can be used along with a fork clamp and two-wheel clamps as well. I prefer making DIY equipment as you will be able to modify and make adjustments to your liking.

You can easily learn how to carry a bicycle on your motorbike safely without worrying about the motorbike weight if you can make DIY equipment. Happy cycling!