
It's quite sturdy, actually. It held my 200 pounds when I hung on it.My biggest concern was not letting the cross pieces twist, so those are spaced essentially at 45° to the center of the tire so that the tire rests on both legs of the angle. Keep in mind that it's only two tires wide; I would use something a little beefier if it was any wider.
What is the distance between the lower two pieces supporting the tires?
To cut down the possibility of the cross piece twisting, cut a couple of short (1 1/2" long) pieces of angle and bolt the two vertical corners together.
Not to tromp on the DIY notions, but for $130 I got a rack that will hold any 4 tires I care to throw in it, is completely adjustable, has trustworthy engineering throughout and looks pretty sharp to boot.
Mine came from Tire Rack, the same model is sold by several resellers. I think you can find it as low as $100 if you shop around.Can you provide a link or a name?
The cross pieces ended up at 17" on center. This was a trial-and-error adjustment to get the tires to contact both legs of the angle. See the attached sketch.
The pieces (except these cross pieces which are 21") are all 24" long.
Not to tromp on the DIY notions, but for $130 I got a rack that will hold any 4 tires I care to throw in it, is completely adjustable, has trustworthy engineering throughout and looks pretty sharp to boot. Unless you're a skilled welder who has the time and materials at hand, any DIY effort is going to cost half of that or more and have questionable strength and reliability... not to mention downsides on things like sharp edges, looks and adjustability.
I'm an experienced DIYer and fabricator, but I really didn't want 100+ pounds of wheel and tire up on the wall where a cheap bolt, bad weld or simple miscalculation could bring them raining down on someone. That was thought #1. Having a kinda ugguly thing of lumber or HD angle iron up there was downcheck #2. The effort of having to adjust it to different tire sizes, maybe someday, was #3.
Clearly YMMV and every man's garage is his own damned castle. But it was an easy choice to pass on - almost literally - reinventing the wheel.
