Need help: Trailer hitch bike rack for '09 Accord

[callenja]

I'm looking for the a good hitch bike rack system for an '09 Accord and wondering how involved the installation is? I've read there is some sort of heat shield affecting the installation of a hitch. I've never bought a bike rack before so any tips on that would be appreciated - just needing to haul up to two bikes. Any ideas or suggestions?

[K-Man]

Start by doing a little research on a trailer hitch website to see what type of hitch will fit your vehicle and if you can buy one that just bolts right on, or if you're going to have to drill holes in the frame. If it looks like an easy installation, then you can look into bike rack options.

http://www.trailerhitches.com/

[gti2k2000]

I have had good results from this company.

http://www.etrailer.com/mm5/merchant...FQmkHgodsWDKTQ

[Tman]

From my years in the shop I can tell you to watch out for one thing. The exhaust on Hondas! I replaced more than one tire over the years that got cooked and blew from the rearward tailpipe on Accords. The tire does not need to be right at the exhaust to fry, lotsa heat out of there.

[EBasil]

As referenced above, the "heat shield issue" is that the exhaust gasses, from any car where the pipe is either a straight exit or otherwise aims at the rack, will gradually cook the part of the bike that's nearby. Since this is usually a tire, what happens are swollen, popped and burned tires.

Your Honda has a straight pipe outlet. The tip comes off and you can swap it out for a "turned end" tip you'd get from Kragen or whatever the local discount auto parts store is.

The next step is the rack and since you've got a low-riding car, you definitely want one that "elevates" the rack after it leaves your receiver hitch. You probably also want the smaller, 1.25" hitch, since you don't want to drag that on the ground and you don't need more load capacity than it will support.

Several racks will do the job. One that I've bought and many people around us use is the Performance 2-bike "flatbed" rack. It's easy to use, to pull on and off the car and is affordable. We've used it for long hauls and many rides, and it's great. Thule makes a good top-mount/hanger rack that's similar but for the attachment method, but you'll need to deal with "bike sway" issues.

Lastly, consider that your rack will obscure your tail lights. They totally do. I suggest you consider an auxiliary tail light or, at the least, trailer-tape/reflectors on the rack itself.

[rev106]

You can fix the exaust problem by having a downward facing tip welded on your tail pipe, should be cheaper than one fancy bike tire.

[Tman]

A grea tip for saving coin on hitches is to call around to the local junkyards. A pal found a bolt on hitch for his minivan for $40, new would have been 150-200!

[BrevCampagnolo]

Anybody else have a bad experience with these types of racks? I have a ball-mounted Thule that shakes at speed like an overfed hootchie-cootchie dancer. I used to worry that it would damage either itself or my bike so I put webbing straps on it with rubber-coated hooks that attached to the forward edge of the trunk lid. Putting a little tension on the straps dampened the jiggling but they buzzed in the wind and abraded my paint, so I cut slots in a couple of tennis balls and and slid them up the straps near the hook so the the straps stayed off the paint.

The support straps complicated the task of getting into the trunk so I got out of the habit of using the rack and usually just pulled off the front wheel and stuck the bike in the back seat.

Another problem stemmed from the fact that my frames are long enough and my cars narrow enough that the wheels protruded out into the traffic on both sides of the car, which also made me nervous. The end of the story is that I went back to keeping a station wagon (that's an estate car for those of you with the Queen on your money) for bike hauling.