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.
This rack is solid! Wife's e-bike is 65lbs +.. almost no bounce when on the rack. Easy to deploy the ramps and get her bike on the rack. Rack is a bit heavy, but it needs to be if you have 140lbs of bike on it. Only challenge i encountered is with the single, center vertical attachment point for the frame. My bike is a Trail MTB, Pivot Trail 429, large, non-e-bike'. Once i get my wife's bike on the rack closest to the truck (heavier bike inside), getting my bike on the rack and trying to get the top strap attached to the frame is a challenge' almost have to try to put second bike on the rack while holds her bike in place, then try to attach both same time' its a puzzle challenge' once you figure out how your situation works, it'll be fine. Rack works great! Wife's bike also has fenders that cover most of the top of the tire, making 'wheel hold' style racks unusable. It's a good rack' i give it 4 stars on value because bike racks are just plain expensive these days' just over priced, but they all are, so suck it up or don't buy one.
I contemplated for a long time whether or not to spend the money on the Piston SR roof rack, and I ended up ordering 2 just to 'test' them on my car. I was using the Thule Topride, but also had a 1UP on the minivan.
The awesome thing about the rack is that short people like me can disengage the arms with ease. That is the reason why I went with these instead of the 1UP roof racks for this car. They were so easy to use, that I ordered 2 more for a full roof rack. Definitely expensive, but I only cried once. Happy to have them.
