Can you? Yes. Should you? Well in our experience, no. Even after having the bumper beefed up….
We purchased our Micro Minnie Winnie in June and had the dealer mount a bike rack on the rear bumper. Then we took a short trip to Hannibal MO. When we arrived, we noticed that the bumper seemed to have much more give and wiggle than it did before we headed out. To be safe, we took the bike rack off and put the bikes in the bed of the truck for the return trip.
We returned to the dealer and found that the bumper was indeed loose. The dealer shop did some welding to beef up the bumper. It seemed really solid.
So we headed out to Holland Michigan, bikes mounted on the bumper rack. We were less than an hour into our journey when we could see in our rear camera that the bikes were really bouncing and wiggling. In fact one driver of a car, honked and pointed. We pulled off at the next exit. And while the bikes were still attached, we could tell that the rack/bumper combination was allowing too much vibration for the bikes to ride safely all the way to Michigan.
So once again we took them off the rack and let them ride in the bed of the truck.
I don’t have any photos, because we were pretty stressed and wanting to get back on the road, but there seemed to just be too much bouncing around back there, even with the beefed up bumper.
We are considering a tongue rack, or we might just continue letting them ride in the bed, securely tied down. Better safe than sorry….
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