etrailer | RockyMounts WestSlope 3 Bike Rack Review
etrailer | RockyMounts WestSlope 3 Bike Rack Review
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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-review-rockymounts-westslope-3-bike-rack-rky10223.aspx
Hey everyone, Colin here at etrailer. Today we're going to take a look at the RockyMounts WestSlope 3 Bike Rack.This is a platform style rack that mounts to your 2 inch by 2 inch hitch receiver. It's going to allow you to get up to three bikes loaded and get them transported to and from your destination. One of the really cool features about this bike rack is that it has a tier loading system. Basically, what that means is that if we look from the side, you're going to see that our mountain bike on the back is sitting higher than our middle bike and it's also sitting higher than the women's bike up front. That's going to help increase your ground clearance.
You can kind of see the angle, it comes up as it gets farther back. It’s going to be great for if you have a steep driveway you want to pull into, maybe you like to go a little bit off road when you want to get to your trails.Something else it’s going to help out with is the spacing between bikes. Not necessarily the width, but because it is sitting higher than the previous bike, if you got wider sets of handlebars, then it’s just going to go above the other set of handlebars rather than making contact with them.Just like a lot of platform racks, this one does tilt away from the vehicle. It’s not that user friendly when it comes to that. The T-pin is towards the base.
However, it gets kind of difficult to reach over there and pull the pin without letting the bikes fall over, so I’m going to call in an extra set of hands just to give me help with showing you about it. He’s just going to lift up on the back slightly while I pull the T-pin down here. Once I pull that, you can let it tilt away. And it is going to hold all the bikes while it tilts away. From there, you’re able to open up your trunk.
You can see there’s plenty of clearance between our hatch and our bike loaded. We can grab whatever gear or cargo, luggage, whatever we might have in the back.When you’re tilting it back up, you do want to make sure you grab a hold of the bike rack itself and not the bikes loaded. I’m just going to squat down. Make sure you lift with your legs. Just going to pull it up until it locks into place.
Now, it is a little bit of a disadvantage that you most likely need that extra set of hands to tilt it away when it’s fully loaded. If there’s only one or two bikes loaded, you could probably get it done by yourself. But chances are, if you’re carrying three bikes, there’s going to be someone else with you, so that shouldn’t be a big problem.A really cool thing about this bike rack is that it’s going to secure your bikes with no frame contact, so you’re not going to have to worry about your frame getting scratched up. And also, you don’t have to worry about the style frame you have. With hanging style bike racks, sometimes you can’t quite fit them on, you may need to get a bike adapter bar. Not the case with this bike rack. It’s just going to connect using a wheel hook on your front wheel, putting downward force, kind of just forcing it down into that cradle. Then the second strap is going to be down here securing your back wheel onto the cradle.The bike rack is going to be pretty user friendly when it comes to loading and unloading. When loading, like I said, that tier loading system does help out a lot, and especially because we have the two arms coming out instead of a full platform, we can fit in between them to load our first and second bikes. The third one’s going to load up the exact same way. It’s very easy to get it up and on. That back cradle is going to pivot for however long your bike is to make sure it sits on that back wheel perfectly.Our cradles are going to be able to hold tires up to 3 inches wide, and we even have a slot in the middle for any road bike tires we want to fit in, it’ll get it a little bit more snug in there. And on the outside, you’re going to be able to get your mountain bikes loaded as well. So we see that road bike tire fit right in.And then we’ve just got to pull the hook up, we’re just going to get it right in front of our brakes right there and just push down on it. You’re going to hear it click. We’re just going to go all the way. Once we make contact like that, we’re just going to give it a good push using the handle right there. And then we can secure our strap.Once you have everything secure, it is really going to have a good hold on your bikes. Just to show you guys, let’s show you how it performed on our test course.Up first is going to be
Will this rack with 2011 Rav4 (with spare wheel on rear door). Does it have enough spacing off the back when folded up?
I think this is the one we are going to buy. It looks great and appears to work well.