BBB ParkingLot Storage Hook

The BBB ParkingLot Bicycle Storage Hook is a relatively cheap solution to hang a road or mountain bike with tyres up to 3in wide. It lacks any sort of swivel feature and is only accessible from the right, so you'll need to place it with care.

• Pros: Very solid construction
• Cons: Doesn't swivel, no channel to hold road tyres straight

Few subjects get cyclists exercised as much as the cost of certain accessories – particularly those reliant on little finesse/design, that perform rudimentary functions. Case in point: hooks for hanging bikes off. Many people have success with plastic-coated pound shop hooks costing, erm, a pound, but this approach is reliant on getting the angle of the hook just right, and is also a single-thread point of failure – not great for heavier bikes in certain surfaces, such as older brick or drywall.

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Then there's the like of the Feedback Sports Velo Hinge – at £28, possibly the most expensive bike hook on the market.

Falling pretty much in between these extremes is the BBB ParkingLot, a fixed, simple 'hook' for tyres from skinny to 3in wide. Made of bent steel, with an indented plastic rim protector to hold the rim in place, it's a pretty simplistic solution. Technically it's not a 'hook' as the bar the rim sits on is straight, the rim staying put because of the indentation.

In order to be wide enough to fit a 3in mountain bike tyre, there's no channel to hold a road bike tyre, meaning there's some room for movement left-right once the bike's in place. This isn't a major issue, but if you like your bikes perfectly arranged it might annoy. Recognising the advantages of being able to swing bikes left or right once on a wall mount to save space, many hooks now feature pivots, but the ParkingLot isn't one of them; the bike sticks straight out from the wall.

Fixing is via three included screws, hefty enough to go into a wooden stud by themselves, or into masonry using the provided 10mm plastic plugs. Noting the instructions say 8mm, but the provided are 10mm.

> Buyer's Guide: 10 of the best bike storage systems

It's hard to say much more about such a functional item. It works, it'll hold a variety of tyre widths, and is strong enough to withstand considerable abuse. I'd say from the look it'll hold a lot more than 20kg without issue, but no doubt BBB has been conservative given it's far more likely to be the wall mounting that would give way before the hook itself did.

The most likely comparison is with the X-Tools version of the same thing, often about the internet for about £5 each. That design (and others of the 'bent hook type') is prone to difficulty getting a tyre/rim combo larger than about 2.5in over the hook, whereas the BBB ParkingLot with its straight bar and indented rim holder is easy to hang chunkier tyres off.

Verdict

A solid, simple design for holding many sizes of tyre and wheel