DIY Budget Sliding Bike Storage
- Nolan Tsuchiya
- Jul 6
- 2 min read
Watch video for full details ^^^
Trolley .stl downloads at bottom (they work great for me with up to a 40lb bike, but USE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION. Bike Sauce is not liable for damages incurred.)
Organizing the garage is a constant effort, but being able to hang 6 bikes on a 7' rail and have easy access to any of them has been a major upgrade. This (video above) is a DIY version of the Stashed Spacerail and a take on The Joy of Bike video from a few years back.
The design is simple, with the biggest challenge mounting the unistrut. In my experience you want to hang the strut at least 22"from the wall to allow bikes to hang naturally and swivel easily. You also want about 78" from the bottom of the hook to the floor to account for most medium and large full-sized mountain bikes.
Materials Used:
Standard 1-5/8" Unistrut (or generic equivalent). Available at any big box hardware store. I got a 10' section for $38 USD and cut down to 7' with a hacksaw and file in about 5 minutes.
Park Tool oversized 470 hooks. These have M10x1.5 machine thread with nuts included. Better than the wood thread version in my opinion. About $7 - $8 USD depending on where you buy.
For every trolley, you'll also need (4) standard 608 cartridge bearings. This is the size used on skateboards, roller blades, scooters, etc..you can get (20) bearings for about $6 USD.
And lastly, you'll need the trolley itself. This is a 3D printed design I created in about an hour - not fancy, but does the job just fine. I printed in the configuration shown below. PETG, 6 wall layers, 60% gyroid infill. There are 2 versions:
Full width trolley - If your unistrut is mounted
perfectly vertically, this may work for you, but in my case, it tended to bind pretty frequently and didn't slide super smoothly.
Notched design trolley - One side is notched out to prevent binding of against the inner surface of the unistrut if it wasn't mounted perfectly vertical.
Trolley .stl file downloads:
They work great for me with up to a 40lb bike, but USE AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION. Bike Sauce is not liable for damages incurred.
Full Width:
Notched:
Thanks so much for putting in the hard work. Who knew Park Tools made hooks with threaded M10. Up to now I took the screw into wood kind of hooks and filed them down. Then cut my own M8 thread. (Could have saved myself a load of work) Going to get a mixture of 470 and 450 hooks. I also changed the stl file. I printed it upside down removing the top radius. I added some flats to the top of the bearing shafts and a 1mm high boss to the M10 hole. Then I used organic supports. Prints like a dream.
Awesome thank you for sharing the STL! I did a similar build earlier this year but I bought hooks w/ bearings from gearblocks. Unfortunately the coating on their hooks started wearing away quickly so I ended up having to get some clear PVC tubing to supplement it: https://renschler.github.io/2025/03/21/sliding-bike-hooks-garage-storage.html I wonder if the parktool hook coating will last longer - keep us posted!