I have recently moved into a house and I am going to build my own tire rack so I can get my off-season wheels/tires off of the garage floor. I know there are companies out there that sell them, or I could make them out of wood, but I am a mechanical engineer and definitely prefer to DIY than to buy a ready-made product. I also have access to a full a machine shop at work so I decided to make my own.
I often times use a product to design frames/machines that is more or less an industrial erector set. It is an aluminum extrusion that comes in many different sizes and will allow me to make exactly what I want. There is no welding that is required which will make it easier to change if I so choose. It is also a nice looking product, in a mechanical/modern kind of way. This is going to be the starting point for the tire rack.
I use Solidworks (a 3D CAD system) all day at work, so I have designed three different racks, of which I will have to choose one.
These will all mount to the studs in my garage, I don't have the wall shown in the renderings.
The first one that I modeled is pretty similar to the rack that Tire Rack sells.
The second one I came up with displays the wheels better (lets face it, I'd like to see my ZHP wheels staring at me when I walk into the garage), it also protrudes out less from the wall so it takes up less horizontal real estate. This setup will also let me bolt something in the middle, making this rack a bit of decoration. I'm thinking about a European license plate.
The final idea is a similar take on the last one, but wont need any lug bolts to hold the wheel/tire to the rack.
So those are my ideas so far. I'll have to narrow it down and figure out which one I like best.
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Originally Posted by danewilson77
