Custom Thule Bike Rack

I recently sold my old mountain bike and purchased a new one.

This led to the decision to modify my existing bike rack to blend

more seemlessly with the look of the truck.



The original bike rack is a Thule model and came with a black

powder coated finish. Having parts powder coated is extremely

inexpensive and only makes sense to have all the parts you can

gather at once to be coated. The only basic prerequisite to

having metal parts powder coated, is that they are completely

disassembled. This means any part that cannot withstand

extreme heat must be removed. All fasteners must also be

removed, so the parts are completely coated.



I also decided to add functioning lights to the bike rack for

added visibility and safety. The lights are Hella LEDs and are

very bright. They are designed to be recessed into their

mounting surface. Once mounted, they offer a nice unobtrusive

appearance. The two inner most lights function as running

lights, and the two outer most lights function as turn signals

and brake lights. The wiring is simply plugged into the 4 pin

trailer plug at the rear of the truck. To clean up and protect

the different colored wiring, all the wires were covered with

two layers of heat shrink tubing. The tough part was planning

where to have heat shrink tubing in place before all the

connections were sodered together. Trust me, this was no easy

task!



. . . . and of course, all this work would be pointless, without

this beautiful machine!