Because of the various fat frames on three of our bikes realised I'd have to buy at least two new carriers with suitability for oversize downtubes as the local ebay ones finishing tonight were an older basic type for smaller round tubes.
So this afternoon went to Halfords and bought a twinpack of their *Advanced* model carrier which is a Thule 530 in a Halfords box.... £71-99 which in the end was far cheaper than anyone local was for the Thule 530 bought as singles.
Nice bit of kit but came with more assembly required than expected. Now I've built one up it seems there is also more fiddling about than I'd expected to fit on the roof. Seems the downtube clamp determines the bike position on the carrier then you have to slide the tyre pads/straps to suit the bike wheelbase.
Then the position of the rear tyre pad determines somewhat the position of the sliding rear mount to fit the roof cross bars. This in turn determines the max roof crossbar spacing which I had set to around 1.1m by eye before I had the carriers but will have to close up to 0.8m for the carrier clamps to fit.
The roof crossbar instructions say min distance between them to be 0.7m so I guess it's OK.
Due to the typical modern car styling of a narrowing body at roof level it looks tight to fit the 4 carriers/bikes on. Just seen the used ebay carriers go above what I'm willing to pay so I'll get another Halfords pair tomorrow and cross my fingers they'll all fit in the width of crossbar available.
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