Compact Plywood Bicycle Wheel Rack

This Instructable will show you how to make a compact rack to hang off your spare bicycle wheels from a single sheet of plywood. In fact, it will show 3 different ways to do this.

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When riding different bikes (race, mountain and gravel bikes), one ends up collecting multiple spare wheels. Then, when your oldest son decides to do the same, chaos in your shed is complete. We have 5 sets of wheels lying around the place. Time to neatly store them away, but space is limited!

The principle of this build is to use one plywood sheet and cut out a pattern that allows you to hang your bicycle wheels very close to each other. In this build we are able to hang 10 wheels within 1 meter.

Supplies

Required Materials:

1. A sheet of plywood 93 cm x 30 cm x 1,5 cm. Depending on the amount of wheels you can increase or decrease its length. The thickness of the sheet is not critical, just as long as it is sufficiently thick.
2. A wooden strip for reinforcing the base. This is optional: if your sheet is sufficiently thick there is no need for this strip.
3. Brackets (#4)
4. Screws (#16)

Required Tools:

Depending on the way you decide to build this project:

Option I: two drills (40mm and 80mm) and an (electric) jigsaw.

Option II: just one (electric) jigsaw.

Option III: a CNC router (DXF file is included in this step).

Step 1: The Geometry and Dimension

Hanging wheels side by side at the same level is not very efficient as the axles, brake rotors and gears take up a lot of space, whereas at the top, the rims are relatively narrow. The principle of this rack is to hang the wheels at different heights so that the rotors, gears and axles fit nicely together. So one wheel low, the next one slightly higher, the next one slightly lower...etc.

Since the rack needed to be suitable for wheels of race bikes and gravel bikes as well, we have chosen for a fairly wide (but compact) geometry. The widest tyre is 35mm, therefore we have designed the rack for 40mm width. The highest rim in our collection (rim and tyre) is 75 mm. We needed to account for this as well. See Step 4 for guidelines to customize this design.

In the drawing attached to this step, you will find all the details of the finished product. You can use this drawing and a jigsaw to complete the job. If you have a CNC router, a DXF file is included as well (see previous step). For now we will describe the build following option I of the previous step.

Step 2: Measure Twice, Drill Twice, Cut Twice

Take drawing 1 and drill the 40mm holes according to the pattern.

Take drawing 2 and drill the 80mm holes according to the pattern.

Take drawing 3 and cut 50mm wide sections at the specific points.

Take drawing 4 and remove the remainder of the wood.

Step 3: Add Reinforcement Strip and Bracket

Depending on the thickness of your sheet of plywood and the size of your brackets, you can choose to add a small reinforcement strip at the top of the sheet. We have glued a strip of 93 cm x 3,5 cm x 0,8 cm.

Attach the brackets and screw it into the ceiling. Depending on the type your ceiling you might need to use special plugs.

Step 4: Customizing the Design.

As mentioned before, this design was based on race wheels and gravel wheels with discs. Pure race wheels with rim brakes or mountainbike wheels with discs take up a different space. Therefore, the design principle to customize the design to your own specifications is as follow:

A - Tyre width + 5mm margin.

B - Tyre width + 10mm margin. Since this is the central slot to insert tyres, a larger margin is required.

C - Maximum height of the rim and tyre combined.

D - 1/2 times the axle width

E - 80% of the disc brake rotor (or gear) diameter

F - Depending of the thickness of the wood and weight of your wheel. We have chosen 3cm.

G - Depending of the thickness of the wood and the length of your board. We have chosen 4cm.

We strongly recommend to build a quick mock up in cardboard before cutting your best piece of plywood!