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I applaud the creative thinking. Some comments:
The stress you need to be concerned with is a stress from beam bending at the M18 bolt going into the tow hook threads. Lug nuts and tow hooks generally will not have a bending load applied, so M18 is plenty strong for those applications. I'm not familiar with the exact geometry of the tow hook receivers, but anything you can do to add support away from the centerline will greatly increase the strength.
Whatever you stick into those holes, you'll need to assume one day someone will stand on the end of it, and it should hold when that happens. You also need to assume that if it bends, people will bend it back straight (repeatedly) and drive with it off road at excessive speed. Really. That's why Yakima racks last forever - the cost of failure on the road is so high that they are incredibly over-designed.
I have an old (discontinued :-( ) Yakima HitchFork that is kind of similar to what you're going for, but does actually use the 2" hitch receiver. I got it because it uses standard Yakima round bars, to which my friends and I can attach any of our favorite Yakima attachments. And I can move my attachments to my friends' Yakima racks when it is their turn to drive. So that thinking might help - compared to what your (initial 2016) rack design was, with custom Aluminum bars and mounts, how about just making something so you could screw a standard Yakima 1" round bar into the tow hook receiver? You'd just be making the adapter from the Yakima round bar to the tow hook receivers. Seems to be a lot simpler, and perhaps more versatile for customers.
Here's a photo I found online of someone else's HitchFork. Great solution for me, but I'm guessing they discontinued it because people needed to have it swing out of the way. Those are standard Yakima bars so you can attach anything on there. 2 bikes is an easy standard fit, maybe even spaced far enough back to allow the hatch to lift. I've run with 4 bikes on it, with a little creativity, plus 3 more up top (different car).
Most stable bike roof rack utilizing the handle bars and seats for main support. It adapts to all Porsche and aftermarket OEM racks and really cheap too.
12-12-2017, 09:50 PM
