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We have just been into Halford to buy some roof cycle carriers ( we already have a rear high one but need roofies for when towing the van )

Anyhooo ..
I happened to check the destructions to find that they all say that the maximum weight per bike is 15 kg !!!!
Hmmmmm the sceptic in me says this could be a 'get out of jail free' card for the manufacturers if anything ever went wrong !!

I asked the girl in the shop how much the average adult bike weighs ,to be told 18 kg ! I asked her to direct me to the bikes that weighed less than 15kg and she said they didnt have any in stock but do sell one for ££££s !!

SO can you imagine what would happen if anything went wrong with it ? You try to complain to the manufacturer that your bike flew off and wrote off your caravan and caused a pile up on the m1 ,to have them shrug their shoulders and say " well ,you were not using it in a accordance to the instruction  of less than 15kg per bike "

I use the Thule proride 591 and that carrier is rated for 20KG

thule say it is the only roof mounted bike carrier on the market with a capacity to carry bikes up to 20 kg.

Quote: Originally posted by reggiewac on 08/7/2011

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force ten - I'm just about to buy some carriers. Do you think the 591 are worth double the price of the 532?

I didn't realise they still made bikes over 15kg!

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I love the ease of fitting the bikes on the 591 and it is a good quality carrier 

I have no personal experience of the Free Ride 532 so cant really say how they compare, but in general all the Thule products that I have used have been very good quality so I would say that the Thule Free Ride 532 is probably a very good cycle carrier

 

 

Quote: Originally posted by kian06 on 08/7/2011

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Simple really,dont buy it.

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Doh ,we didnt .
How selfish to just think of ourselves and not warn anyone else who may not have read the small the small print? .
As all the cycle carriers said on the packaging was 'suitable for 3 adult bikes ' It is only in the small print in the legal bumf right at the back of the destruction book where it states the 15kg limit .
When according to halfords ,not many bikes actually weigh less than that .

It may be that the Halfords staff got the average weight wrong?

The cheapest mountain bike listed on their website is 14.5kg for instance and the cheapest from Evans is around 15kg.

Maxxraxx also use 15kg as an average weight with their guidance of how many bikes can be carried with their system.

In any event - Thanks for pointing this out as I'm sure most people will go on the item packaging rather then the small print

I would imagine most bikes from Halfords weigh more than that because they're cheap bikes made of cheap, heavy materials and quite a lot of the current ones have suspension, which at the cheaper end of the range can be extremely heavy. On the other hand a good quality lightweight racing bike can weigh around 9Kg and something like my classic english tourr around 12Kg. Halfords make cheap bikes? Well, they're not that cheap, admittedly and they're certainly not as nasty as some of the stuff you see in the supermarkets but if you go into a proper bike shop you'll see what good quality bikes can be like. And cost! Anyway, I usually say here the average adult bike weighs around 15Kg because that will cover everything. I can imagine that a member of Halfords staff that only knows their own bike range weights would say much what your assistant did.

However it does seem pretty stupid that Halfords sell bike racks that can't carry the majority of their own bikes. A letter of complaint to Halfords CS, perhaps? In the meanwhile, buy Thule racks. Or weigh your bikes? You might not have anything to worry about.

 A lot of the modern mountain bikes weigh quite a lot, at present I have a GT avalanche 1.0 which has a hydro formed aluminum frame it is a £600.00 plus bike so not really a cheap bike sort of mid range

And the weight of that one bike is 14.10 kg, so it is right up near the top und of some of the carriers that is one of the reasons that I went for the Thule proride