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Writer's pictureMegan Hill

Velosock Bike Covers.....keepin' it clean

Updated: Mar 17, 2020





Velosock bike covers are a great option for both indoor and outdoor use!  The material is lightweight, meaning that it packs down very easily and therefore makes a great travel companion. The indoor covers are meant to cover your wheels and drivetrain (ie - all the "dirty parts") and work great for when you are transporting your bike in your car and don't want to transfer dirt and grease from your bike and drive train onto your car (or they work great to keep your apartment or home clean for those that store there bike inside).  When we travel in our van we sometimes keep a bike or two up in the "living area" for quick transport and it's nice to help keep things clean there and not worry about our drivetrains leaving scuff marks and grease.  And for those of us that transport our bikes inside our cars, how many of us have permanent grease or scuff marks from our bikes? Hence, the veloscok cover!

The outdoor cover also packs down nicely in it's 11 x 8 x 4 inch soft carrying case and is lightweight (which is both good and bad.. more on that later).  It's much lighter and packs down much smaller than some other full "heavy duty" covers; they are advertised to be machine-washable although I have yet to try that option out.  They are made of water repellent material (not water resistant), which means that your bike will most likely not stay "dry" if you drive it through a rainstorm, but it will be protected from the dirt, grim, and salt that we tend to pick up on our Utah roads through the winter.  On my first test run we drove through 3 hours persistent of rain, sleet, and snow and it did it's job handily.  While the bike was wet, it was free from the dirt and grime (which is the overall goal of putting a cover on). The outdoor cover is really easy to put on with two people, but takes a little bit of practice with one person.  It has sealed, heavy duty zippers the run along the top, bottom, and middle part of the rack which I believe would make it accommodate most racks (and should also allow you to use your cable lock to lock the bike to the rack).  We have a Kuat Sherpa rack and it took a bit of adjusting to make the rear tire mount strap work.  Unfortunately, the front tire mount on our Kuat rubbed a small pea-sized hole in our cover after the first use.  The covers do come with patches to repair these small holes so I believe this is an "expected" result with the covers, but also makes me wonder how they'll hold up after repetitive, heavy use.  There are small pedal covers that you can use to keep your pedals from ripping through your cover, and as long as you make sure your rack doesn't have any sharper edges that may cause a problem, I would hope that the cover will hold up long term, because I really like how compact and lightweight they are.


One last quick note on the outdoor covers. The bike in the cover was rock solid at highway speeds on our boxier Honda Element when the bike was placed in the rack position closest to the vehicle. In comparison, when placed on the outer most rack on our more "aerodynamic" Mazda CX5, it did seem to "lay over" just a bit at high speeds (over 55mph+) which initially made my uneasy before I trusted that my bike wasn't going anywhere :)

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Pros:

  • Lightweight and packable

  • Stretchy, form fitting design

  • Keeps bikes and surroundings (car, apartment, etc) clean

  • Accommodates wide range of bikes and indoor/outdoor racks

  • Reasonably priced

Cons:

  • Long-term durability unknown





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