I have a gen 1 kuat transfer, my new piston pro is so much nicer. Doesn't rock around in the hitch, holds 4.5 fat bikes and 29r mountain bikes solidly with little fuss. Included cable lock is a great feature
Very easy to mount to a wall stud. Strong and sturdy. Comes with a hex wrench to make adjustments to the arms (I store the hex wrench in the track that holds one of the arms if I need it to make adjustments). I have three of these - two down low so that the wheels of the bikes sit on the ground to make it easy for my short wife to store her bikes and one about six feet up the wall in the garage for me to store my bike up and out of the way.
My daughter is a pro/1/2 cyclocross racer (humble brag) (and whatever the fast classes are in gravel bikes and MTBs) who grew tired of a roof rack, and changed to a trailer-receiver rack. She's going to travel this year and do the Belgium Gravel Race/Ride (whatever it is) series, with the longest trip to Arizona. My wife is going to support her in Arizona, and my younger daughter is going to go to Arizona with her dirt bike. (I am going to stay in Boise and watch the dogs.)
Anyway, i bought two of these racks - one for my daughter, and one for my wife. This was based on my daughter's market research - her racing buddies LOVE this rack.
This rack is crazy good - cast aluminum parts, integrated locks and work stand, and quality fasteners and integrated tool. That's the good part.
The bad part is that Kuat includes an inadequate set of printed instructions with the rack. The lack of instructions relates both to the assembly instructions and the use instructions. In particular, shortcomings are with the integrated work stand and the plastic plug to protect the rack when the work stand isn't installed, and the use of the steel ball to take up slack in the rack-receiver interface.
My daughter ended up tightening the slack-absorbing ball OUTSIDE the receiver, and it jammed in the rack. When I went to visit her, I had to take a ball peen hammer, appropriately size socket and extension to hammer the ball out of the rack. Once i explained how this worked, we reinstalled the rack, put a piece of red tape to indicate the depth to which the rack should be installed. Once we made these changes, installation on the vehicle was easy.
The printed included instructions really didn't cover the work stand very well, and not much detail on the steel ball which takes the slack out of the receiver/rack interface.
The other disappointment is the really cheap receiver/rack lock. Tiny, soft steel. I bought a Master lock which is of much higher quality. Given the cost of this rack, i don't want to someone walking off with it. That problem was solved for $15.
WIth just a bit of extra effort on the part of Kuat, this would be 5 stars.
I found that there was very little benefit to wall mounting bikes and wanted easier access to each, these seemed like the right solution and they have been. Works great with my kid's bike, and my road bikes and 29ers, forwards or backwards. I have a textured garage floor and they're impressively stable when removing and replacing bikes and the amount of arm through to capture the bike is pretty short, so you can keep them pretty close to the wall.
