Today on our 2014 GMC Sierra 1500 Series, we'll be doing a test fit of the Thule Insta-Gater truck bed single bike rack. That's Part Number TH501. I've already got it loaded up just to give you a good idea of what it looks like and how it's going to work. You can see how it's going to secure our bike without having to remove the front tire. It's going to secure the whole bike, and we've still got enough room for at least one more, possibly two more, of the Thule Insta-Gaters. It's going to allow our bike to stay upright. There's not a whole lot of movement in there.
It's going to secure it nicely. It's going to work with tire sizes up to 3 inches wide, and it will work with tire sizes from 20 inches all the way up to 29 inches in diameter. It's going to secure it quite nicely. Let's go ahead and take it off. What we want to do is we're just going to come down here. First off, I'll tell you how it's secured here.
We've got this tire hook going behind our tire, putting down force into the cradle down here, and it's also putting pressure up against the tailgate here. As I said before, there's not a whole lot of movement there. We'll come down here. We'll press in on the button. We'll raise that hook up, lower it, and then as you can see, our bike is freed up. Now I'll show you how it's secured.
What we'll do is we'll go ahead and drop down that tailgate, and as you can see, we've got these straps that are going to go between our truck bed and our tailgate here. That way when our tailgate is closed, it locks it into position, and then we can ratchet it down to make it nice and tight, so it's going to pull forward up against our tailgate and lock it all into position and prevent it from moving. This has a weight capacity of 50 pounds, so you want to be sure and make sure that your bike doesn't weigh over 50 pounds. That's pretty much it for the test fit of the Thule Insta-Gater, Part Number TH501 on our 2014 GMC Sierra 1500 Series.
Brian
10/26/2019
Is this a long bed or short bed?I have a 2017 gmc 1500 Denali 5’8” bed with a bakflip tonneau cover and a medium frame 29er specialized . Will this work with what I have going on here? The tonneau cover flips back up the the back cab glass but does take up a few extra inches with that being the case. Could I angle the back end of bike of to one side or the other if doesn’t fit straight with tailgate shut? Any info would be great here! Thank you!