April 13, 2009
Rack Attack Team
When mountain biking, the more the merrier! Don't deny your friends a jolly good day in the hills with your scrawny little trunk rack--get everyone up the mountain with a Thule 4-bike platform rack!
One sunny spring day several of us from Rack Attack Portland actually had a day off together. Why not make the drive up the Gorge to ride some Hood River trails!? Thankfully, we had at our disposal a Thule 916 T2 2" hitch mount rack--but there were four of us. Solution--the Thule 918 2-bike Add-On! Around the shop we call this bad chicken the "T4", and it is one beast of a rack.
Why did we need such a solid piece of engineering? Because we were riding in Hood River on our freeride bikes, of course. These machines come in around 35-40lbs, so they are way too much for a trunk rack (plus trunk racks max out at 3 bikes). And because they are full-suspension, the bikes don't like to hang from traditional 'arm-style' hitch carriers. And forget about loading on the roof of a lifted Jeep.
The T2/4 is phenomonally easy to use--set the bike in the tray, hook down the front wheel, strap the rear wheel. And there is virtually no conflict between the bikes--we just had to adjust the seat height on a couple to get them to mesh together. Try that on a trunk rack!
Easy to use platform bike racks like the T2/4 will absolutely make your ride better. No anxiety about the bikes flying off the roof, no worry about your strap rack magically disconnecting while you are driving out the highway. And with Thule locking features, no worry about the rack being gone when you return to the trailhead. Thanks to Thule, our day on the trail was EPIC!
