Swagman bike rack
September 26, 2020
Written By: J.Couch
For the last few years we have been putting our bikes inside the trailer when we travel. But this was causing a lot of problems. One being damage to the interior of the trailer along with them being dirty and greasy. Two, it was just a hassle to load them up and having to unload them every time we stopped to set up camp.
We don’t have a rear bumper on this trailer so we would need to have one installed just to mount a bike rack. Looking into this, the cost just to add the bumper was $900 plus to get it installed. A lot more than I wanted to spend just to get the bikes out of the trailer.
I ended up purchasing the Swagman STRADDLER Trailer Hitch Mount Adapter from Amazon and mounting this to the A-frame of the trailer.
The only thing that I had an issue with was I had to get different bolts since the ones that came with it were to short. About 6 inches or so. I wanted to mount it over the battery but there was an extra metal tube for the battery box that would not allow me to with the bolts provided.
Below is a link to the Amazon item and a few pictures of how and where it was installed.
Next I purchased a fairly inexpensive Hyper Tough Platform 2 bike rack from Walmart to start off. You can attach any bike rack that has a 2 inch hitch or in this case with an adaptor up to the 2 inches. This one worked well for the price and we will see how it holds up over time. But for now it works and the bikes are out of the trailer.
We ended up driving from Bad Lands South Dakota up to North Dakota, back across to Casper, Wyoming then down to Denver. Over that time the hitch mount and bike rack worked perfectly.
I would recommend this set up if you are not able to install a rear bike rack or the one that mounts over the jack.
If you have any questions please let me know.
