1UpUSA Bike Rack and Rivs

[Michael Hechmer]

Thanks to everyone who gave me feed back on how various bike racks worked with Rivs, fenders, racks, and wide bars.  In the end we bought the 1UpUSA rack and offer this initial review

Bottom line - Rack is an A, customer service is gentlemen's C.

First the rack.  It is as solid and almost as easy to set up as they claim.  Once learned it is pretty simple to live with and works well with my large Saluki and Pat's Betty.  Pictures here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/25287678@N08/sets/72157655639570388

It was easy enough to get the rack onto the car, and adding or removing the second carrier is literally a one minute job.  I initially ran into trouble getting it set up to work with fenders on 650B tires and had enough frustration to almost send it back.  After some experimenting however I got it rock solid.

The rack comes preconfigured to work with 700C tires, without fenders or a rack.  I bought a pair of the fender adapters to add to the rear supports but found two problems.  The rear carrier pinched, crushed actually, the fender stays before getting tight to the fender and the front attachment didn't quite get to the tire before hitting the fender.  I lowered both the front and rear bars so that they would hit the wheels sooner.  (you can see in the pictures how the tire stops have been lowered.  This worked well in the front but continued to bend the rear fender stays.  I went ahead and pushed the rear tight.  This held the fender very firmly but allowed the wheel to move across the width of the two vertical wheel holders.  When I released the carrier from the wheel I found that the stays immediately bounced back into position.  You can see this clearly in one of the photos.  I decided to simply add toe straps around the rear wheels, which held them firmly to one side.

I took the rig out for a shakedown cruise which included 5 miles of dirt road, 5 miles of bad chip and seal and 5 miles of smooth highway.  Pat drove while I sat in the back seat and observed the bikes.  Given the amount of weight cantilevered off the back of the car and the roughness of the roads there was plenty of movement of the cars suspension but absolutely none between the bike and carrier nor the carrier and the hitch.

The second bike carrier can be removed very easily and the whole rig then folds up out of the way, much better than any Tule, Yakima, or Saris rack that I have seen.

So A for easy on and off and A for solidness.  A for fitting two complex bikes without any interference.

Service.  Before ordering I sent two emails to the company seeking clarification of their shipping policy.  I never got an answer.  As I was working through the fender / rack / 650B set up, I called them.  I told the nice lady at the other end of the line that I was having problems with the set up, and "before I send this back to you I would like to talk to someone who can speak about these issues."  She promised that someone would call me but no one ever has.

C for customer service.

Michael

[Deacon Patrick]

Glad you found a rack that works for you! I'd grade that a customer service F. Failure to respond.

With abandon,

Patrick

[Michael Hechmer]

I've gotten two messages telling me the link didn't work, which is puzzling because it works for me.  Here's another paste and copy.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/25287678@N08/albums

I seem to be having problems with Flicker lately, and iCloud photos hasan't worked since I "upgraded " to Yosemety

Deacon, I didn't give them an F because they sent the rack in a timely fashion.  Otherwise, your right - F for failure to respond.

Michael

[cyclotourist]

Still can't see it. Your photos end with this one on June 10th:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/25287678@N08/18750929011/in/datetaken/

Guessing you have your uploads defaulted to private.

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Cheers,
David

Member, Supreme Council of Cyberspace

"it isn't a contest. Just enjoy the ride." - Seth Vidal

[Michael Hechmer]

Thank you David, I'm not sure how that got switched, but found the settings under Edit, which doesn't seem particularly intuitive to me at least.  I had looked for Settings under More.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/25287678@N08/sets/72157655639570388

The original link should take people to the exact set.

Now if I could only figure out why Photos tells me pictures have been uploaded to iCloud but nothing has appeared since I installed 10.10.3

Michael

[cyclotourist]

That's the one!

I like how compact it is, maybe because it's just a single, but it
looks like the mounting/hinge area is much cleaner than the similar
Thule.

[Michael Hechmer]

It can be a singe, double or triple.  Each carrier slides over two bolts so they are very quick to put on and off.  The two bike set up folds up under my rear door, but since we most often use it for one bike, we decided to leave one in the garage.  The base also folds in half so it is pretty simple to put it in a trunk.

Michael

[Jon Dukeman in the foothills of Colorado]

Michael,

Looks like a nice unit. Next time you get it loaded with two bikes would you please take a picture and share??

Thanks,

Jon

[Michael Hechmer]

Jon, I hope you can see the bikes loaded here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/25287678@N08/sets/72157655639570388

[Jon Dukeman]

Michael,

All I could see was the rack folded up..no bikes.

no problem..I was just curious.Looks like a nice rack.

Jon

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[Stephen D]

Thanks so much for posting a report on this -- I've been looking for a more detailed review of how this rack works with fenders.  

I'm getting a 404 error when I click on your flickr link.  Can you post the link again?  

Thanks again, your post answered some of the questions I had after the recent discussion on 1UpUSA racks.

Best,

Stephen

[Edwin W]

I, too, can only see the picture of the rack on the car without the bikes, but would like to see how you made it work. 

[Michael Hechmer]

For some reason beyond my understanding Flicker has switched all 5000+ of my photos to private!  I have been unable to find a master switch to undue this.  I thought I had made the album of 10 photos public, but apparently only one photo got switched.  I've gone back and redone it.  I apologize for all the confusion and inconvenience.  Here's the link again.

Michael

[Michael Hechmer]

I still haven't figured out how to simply reverse Flicker but I think I have decoded Apple.  From the intuitive to the obscure.  In OS X.9, when you set up an album to share it prompted for a public site.  In OS X.10.3 this doesn't happen.  Instead you must return to Photos, open the album, identify an 8 point picture of a head on your screen and click on it to get the public option.  No help at all from Help.  I guess it just another thing Apple wanted to keep secret.  Anyway if you still can't get Flicker to work, try this icloud link:

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B02GFssfGGIBYaP

Michael