This is a highly subjective writing simply because I had to put this certain bike into my car, and I've never put it into other cars.
Ok, so you might be asking, why would I ever need to know this? Well, it might just come in handy, since I own a 1992 cavalier and needed to put a 6' bike into today, you might too.
So how does one go about putting a 6' bike into a 5' 7" car? Well it all started when I told my friend I would give him a ride home, since he wanted to bike home at 11:30 at night in a bad neighborhood, which isn't a good idea. So I told him I would take him and his bike home, the first step was getting the bike into the car.
Getting the bike into the car was the hard part, we fiddled with it, but eventually got it in. Here is how we did it:
- If you have a 1992 cavalier you can take the back seat and fold it down, I would suggest doing this.
- Then take the passenger's seat, and move it all the way forward and lean it against the dash.
- Then take the front wheel of the bike and put it into the trunk as FAR as it will go, the frame will eventually stop it from going further.
- At this point the back wheel should be to a point where it doesn’t fit in the car if you were to close the door. This also shouldn’t be that much of a problem, simply roll down the passenger's side window and lift the tire so that when you close the door the tire will hang out the window.
- The last thing to fix is the driver's seat. The driver's seat is probably pushed forward against the wheel, and cannot be moved back because of the seat of the bike. In my case this wasn’t a huge deal because we were able to force the driver's seat back and the seat of the bike out of the way long enough to push the seat back for me to sit in it. I still had to share the driving area with a bike seat, but as my bottom well knows, they aren't that big.
Once we got the bike in, everything closed, and everything situated so that I could drive, I had my buddy get into the backseat on top of his bike since the passenger's seat no longer existed. He could have gotten into my trunk, if there wasn't stuff in it. Lucky the trip wasn’t far, over every bump I heard groaning since the metal was digging into him.
Getting the bike out of the car was MUCH easier, and took about two minutes. Getting the bike in on the other hand took about a half an hour to figure out. Even though getting it out was easy, getting the bike into the car was fun. The reason it was fun is because we were laughing so hard while trying to get a BIG bike into a LITTLE car, it seemed futile, but I wouldn’t give up. In the end it worked. I'm glad I was able to do it, proving once again that engineer's daughters have some smarts too.
Yes, taking off the wheels would work, but only if they came off easy. This kid's bike had wheels that were rusted on. Thanks
You might want to note that I don’t know if it is legal to have things hanging out of your car, or if it is legal to have non seat belted passengers in your car, even if it is the back seat. Thanks.