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I've got a popup (tent) trailer and need to carry 6 bikes. I'd prefer not to put them on the roof of my van (the roof rack is rated to only 100 lbs and it's really high for lifting bikes onto).

So far I've found this one: http://www.discountramps.com/pop-up-camper-bike-rack.htm

But I also saw a Do It Yourself design for one that is a lot simpler. It would be great to find a simpler less expensive one like that to purchase.

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Add a second towball on the rear of the camper and fit a car bike rack for three bikes. If your camper has a spare wheel here, then a wheel mount may also work. enter image description here

Add another upstand of some description on the front of the camper for a duplicate setup, and put three bikes on the drawbar. Noseweight should be about the same. enter image description here or enter image description here

Similar option is to run two towballs on the towing vehicle, like this enter image description here

The other option is to put some bikes inside the camper before folding it, but there's often not a lot of space once its all folded down.

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  • I've seen a trailer that had a spare hub and bearing assembly on the drawbar triangle. It held the spare wheel as well, so you could mount a bike rack to that. I've also seen extra towballs mounted on a crossbar on the drawbar triangle, again so a hitch-mounted rack can go there.
    – Criggie ♦
    Commented Dec 9, 2015 at 8:52
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Swagman model 80550 is designed to fit on the roof of pop-up campers, it will hold four bicycles. I would check with your trailer dealer to verify the roof will support the load. Model 80500 is designed to bolt onto the rear bumper of the trailer, it holds two bikes. I would think that putting the lightest bikes on the bumper rack would be the best in terms of balance for the trailer toungue weight, even a small amount of weight that far back may make a difference. I have no personal experience with either design, but they seem like they might solve your problem

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    But you want to be wary of creating a negative tongue weight situation. Maybe 75-150 pounds of tongue weight for a light camper would be ideal, and a few bikes, more or less centered over the wheels, are unlikely to change tongue weight by much.
    – Daniel R Hicks
    Commented Sep 22, 2011 at 2:03
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I'd say your two primary options are a hitch-mount unit or something similar to those pictures.

For the hitch mount I'd advise getting a real trailer hitch, vs trying to just bolt/weld a piece of square tubing to the trailer. The torque that a hitch-mount bike rack places on the hitch is substantial.

For the DIY unit you can purchase the fork mounts somewhere (I have some that I used on a trailer years back), though note that they won't work for some situations (note the extender they need for the disk brake bike on the left). The rest of that DIY setup is so trivial I can't see bothering with something store-boughten.

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