Thule532002 FreeRide Roof Mounted Bike Carrier, standard size

I bought this to replace an existing Thule Proride when I bought a new mountain bike with a fatter bottom bracket that wouldn’t fit in the jaws of the clamp. Fitting it was very easy because it slotted straight in where the old one came out on exactly the same mounting brackets. I remember fitting the old Proride was very fiddly because I had to adjust the position of the roof bars to get the brackets of the rack in just the right place so that the wheel straps didn’t conflict. However, this new rack would have been easier because there is only one wheel strap, and it is diagonal, so should be more flexible with positioning.Front mudguards are ok so long as they are short. The arms need to grip the tyre of the front wheel and if a mudguard is in the way won’t hold it without causing damage. The tiny mudguards that most mountain bikers use are fine. I have a mid-sized mudguard which is ok, but only just. If it had been a problem I would have cut an inch or two off the mudguard with a jigsaw and re-shaped the end with a heat gun.Once mounted on the rack the bike feels very secure, much more so than on the old proride where there was always a worry that the frame could slip out of the jaws, (this happened once whilst driving and I still have a deep scratch in the roof of my car where the pedal went into it).. The two swing arms are easily adjusted to the size of your wheel. It takes a couple of minutes to figure out which arm goes where; there’s a label on the rearmost one telling you to raise it first. Once you’ve made sense of that it’s easy to get the first arm in place, lift the bike up, raise the second arm, push it until it goes click, fasten the rear wheel strap and you are good to go. The two arms form a cross-shaped cage around the front wheel, so it can’t slip out. There is no feeling that the bike could come out of the rack. The bike is only going to come away if the forces through the brackets into the roof bars are excessive: that would require a combination of a very heavy bike with some violent driving. Thule recommend sticking to a maximum of 70mph. If you like to drive faster then probably you’d be better off putting the bike inside the car.It is rated up to a maximum of 20kg, which rules out many e-bikes. Anything over that weight would be a struggle to lift up and place on the rack anyway; my e-mountain bike is 18kg which is within my comfort zone, but anyone contemplating getting one of these will want to be sure they can lift and position the bike without risk of dropping it.Locking is interesting: the old proride had a lock on the swing arm which was part of the routine and so got used every time. This one doesn’t have that, instead providing a cable which pulls out of the tail end of the rack, loops around the back wheel and then can be locked. This is an extra thing to do and so far I haven’t bothered with it. This does make you vulnerable to an opportunist thief if you were to leave it unattended for a couple of minutes. The locks on this and the proride are flimsy and wouldn’t stop a determined thief with wire cutters but are better than nothing.In summary, it works well for me and my bike, and I would recommend it. The price is quite high, but it is a good quality product. My old proride was left in place exposed to the elements for years and never showed any sign of deterioration, so I would expect the same from this one.

I have never used these before and after a lot of research I too the plunge. They arrived the next day and I set about installing them. Very well made and actually very easy to install. Each one took me about ten minutes to put on to my roof rack. I then set about putting the bikes on, one adult and one child’s bike. The locks hold the frames in place and the straps held the wheels secure. The next day we drove 170 miles to Cornwall confident that the bikes would still be there when we arrived. Superb product.

The product looks well thought out, well made, robust but yet light, and accounts for thin framed road bikes, standard frames including hydrid, and chunky mountain bike frames. There are two settings to account for the different frame widths, with a rubberised insert for each of the two settings. Once on, the item looks well made, and of well thought out design. Unfortunately, despite we reasonable grasp of instructions, and my technical nature, the instructions are poor. Small diagrams means you may be scratching your head. FYI, there are two sets of instructions for the main assembly, one for the square section roof bars, one for the cut-outs, once that is worked out, things become a little easier. The curved, robust metal sections have to be inserted through the main part that grips to the bars, with the long T rod (in my case, the short ones are for the other bars) grasping the other end of the curve section, and bolting through the three turning plastic quick releases. (One has a lock on it)To do the upright assembly, turn a couple of pages, you get no clues here.. Then you will see that you have to retain the other rubber flange in case you want to change bikes. It's a shame that Thule couldn't be bothered to have a small A4 text sheet included, English is language understood by many these days, either that, or make the diagrams better.