How to store bicycle wheels and spares?

September 4, 2024 1:42 AM

Any ideas for DIY bicycle spares storage system? Especially complete wheels, rims and tyres. I've been asked to help a bicycle empowerment organisation manage storage of their parts donations.

Every few months they receive containers of used bikes and spares from an overseas donor. Spares are used to repair/build up bikes and are also distributed to other needy organisations.

They have a small staff so often become overwhelmed by the amount of stuff and things get pretty crazy in their storeroom, with wheels piled knee deep.

I'm thinking of setting up a rail system of sorts with hooks.

The room has a fairly high ceiling, so there could be multi levels.

Dimensions:
330cm width x 500cm length x 320cm height

Funds are short so I might need to use common non specialised materials eg pvc pipe, recycled wood etc.

A DIY idea for an S Hook or similar could also be helpful.

A free standing system might be easier to install as the walls are very hard (the building used to belong to a military arms manufacturer, now put to a peace time use), but drilling is possible.

posted by BrStekker to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

St Louis BWorks has had a lot of those same problems and come up with various solutions for them - including if I recall something a little similar to what you're contemplating. They would probably be very happy to talk to you about it.
posted by flug at 2:33 AM on September 4

I think you're on the right track with rails and hooks. I did this in my basement with Unistrut, which has a range of accessories allowing the strut channel to be hung for use as a track for "trolleys." Hanging bikes from trolleys rather than fixed hooks makes it easy to really pack them in. There are several systems marketed to bike owners that use a hook-on-trolley system. I wound up simply hanging my bikes from their front wheels with a single hook on a trolley, but some are much more elaborate.

I attached mine to the basement ceiling, but if it had been higher I would have built cantilevered brackets to set the tracks roughly a bike wheel's radius away from the wall. I don't hate the idea of a free-standing structure, but I suspect it would be expensive, so I'd definitely investigate using a hammer drill to make holes for expanding masonry anchors in the walls first.

The tips I have based on my experience:

While full-price Unistrut branded bits can be quite expensive, it's frequently available on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. Keep an eye out for a while and you may see super bargains. It's also possible to find cheap Chinese knockoffs for parts you can't buy used.

Strut channel comes in a dizzying range of depths and different perforation patterns. Make sure to double-check measurements and make sure it will work for your project before buying something sight unseen.

If you're shocked by the price of commercially available trolleys, remember they are usually rated for weights much higher than a single bike, let alone a wheel. You can get away with hanging a wheel or a lightweight bike from a "trolley" fabricated from two bearings of appropriate size (the wheels) connected to a metal tab and peg. People also make trolleys out of stuff like old hinges. It may be possible to fabricate these from otherwise unusable bike parts or scrap. (Bike organizations, in my experience, LOVE a craft project like this).
posted by pullayup at 5:02 AM on September 4

A long plank of wood with basic hardware-store hooks screwed into it (at about 6" spacing) works really, really well. You can put the plank on the ceiling (so the wheels hang from the hooks), or on the wall (so each wheel will have two points of contact, the hook, and the wall), and it winds up looking very tidy.

I have always preferred this approach over rail/s-hook stuff, because it's nice to have the hooks stationary, rather than mobile and rattly. This also keeps the wheels stationary (especially going the wall-mounted route).
posted by entropone at 6:03 AM on September 4

I can only speak to the DIY S hook comment.

You can just make S hooks. Steel is cheap. A bender that can bend rod to make S hooks is cheap or very easy to fabricate from parts that the organization already has.

I assume a bike shop has a vise and a hacksaw.

So if you need S hooks for one of the other great ideas above, and the cost vs buying makes sense, don't shy away from making them!

A local bike shop with a high ceiling does just have a bunch of books and racks up high, and a pole with a hook for getting them out when needed. Less used items get stacked 8 or 10 deep.
posted by jellywerker at 9:45 AM on September 4

As a follow-up to the "just make your own S-hooks": you can make them out of the steel spokes you pulled out of wheels you rebuilt. Also, you can get a lot of mileage out of the knackered inner tubes you've replaced, as well.

I saw a century-old bike shop in Amsterdam where they just hung the bikes they worked on from spoke S-hooks suspended by braided inner tubes from a beam in the ceiling.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 1:35 AM on September 6