Outfitr Heavy Duty 2-Bike E-Bike Rack Review: Easy Fold & Tilt Tested!

Hello. It's a beautiful spring day today here in New Jersey, a perfect day for a bike ride. And it just so happens that today I'm gonna be talking to you about this new bike rack that I picked up from Outfitter. My wife and I enjoy mountain biking. She wants to get an e-bike for this season. I needed a bike rack, did some research, saw the specs on this Outfitter one. A few things stood out to me that addressed my concerns. And this e-bike bike rack by Outfitter seemed to fit the bill. It holds up to 200 pounds. It is foldable, so you can raise it up when it's not in use, bring it all the way down to the ground, especially for those heavier e-bikes. I have a pickup truck, and this is a hitch bike rack. Fits into a two-inch receiver. I wanted something that I wasn't going to worry about as I'm driving around in my pickup with a couple bikes on my hitch. And I wanted it to be budget-friendly. And Outfitter checked off all of those boxes for me. As I mentioned, there is a 200-pound capacity on this bike rack. Now, for my mountain bikes, I obviously don't have to worry about that because they're relatively light. But the e-bike that my wife is looking at is about 85 pounds, 75 to 85 pounds, if I remember correctly. So the fact that this bike rack could hold 200 pounds was one less concern that I was going to have when it came to transporting the bikes. So I went ahead and placed my order with Outfitter. Within a couple days, the packages arrived, one main huge package, and then another smaller package for the ramp. And I'll get into the ramp a little bit later in this video. What I want to do now is take the next few minutes and just go over the assembly process. It's relatively straightforward. The manual could be a little bit better, but if you follow it, follow the diagrams, look at the pictures. I don't see you having too much trouble. There aren't really that many moving parts as far as the bolts and nuts need to be put together, and they pretty much only fit in one place. So if you do mess up, you're gonna realize, all right, well, this is the wrong size, so let me use the right size. So if you aren't very handy, don't be intimidated. It's a relatively simple process to be able to assemble this bike rack. Now, it will take some time. I did it by myself. Took me probably about an hour, hour and 10 minutes, and I was, of course, recording in between. But of course, if you have an extra pair of hands, they will come in handy at a couple of the assembly points. Now, speaking of two people, the package arrived, was left at my front door. Now, this package is relatively heavy. You might want that extra pair of hands just to be able to get it to wherever you're going to actually assemble the bike rack. I had a hand cart, used a hand cart. That's how I got it into my backyard to begin the assembly process. As far as tools needed, you can get away with just two adjustable wrenches. But there was one part in there where I was using the wrenches and decided, you know what, I have my socket wrench set over there. It'll definitely make it go that much quicker, especially when you need a little bit of extra torque. Once I had the package in my assembly area, I went ahead and got my box cutter, began opening up the box so I could see what I was going to be dealing with during this installation process. One thing that I could say is everything came extremely well packaged, lots of protection, no scratches, nothing was bent, nothing was missing. From there, I just began following the manual, started putting the pieces together. When it came to, I think it was about step two, there were certain bolts that I needed to assemble the next step. I couldn't find the bolts because the bolts were actually already screwed into the piece that I was going to use, so I had to unscrew them. So keep that in mind. Once those two pieces were put together, moved on to the next step. And this is where I realized that I needed my socket set. I was working with the wrenches. It was taking a little bit too long. I wanted to make sure that the torque was right and everything was tightened well. And the socket set made quick work of that part of the assembly. There, I had to assemble the two center posts. And this is where it gets a little bit tricky because there's very little clearance and you need to put these two other pieces on the side. It'll make more sense when you're looking at the manual. And they're like these arc-shaped or U-shaped pieces. So you're basically holding those two pieces underneath with one hand and then feeding that post down, match up the holes, put the bolt in, and you're good to go. Sounds a lot easier when I say it than when I did it. But once you get it, you get it. And you only have to do it twice, once for each post. And you wanna make sure that it's tightened well. It's a pivot area on those posts. And even the manual states to make sure that you have the right torque. Make sure that it's tightened very well. But then again, I would say that for every bolt that you're going to assemble on this rack. From there, there were just the two little pieces left that are actually going to connect to the bicycles. They swivel and turn, have all sorts of flexibility. Very easy to take on and off. And this is what'll connect to, let's say, either your seat post or one of the bars on your bike, whatever works best for your setup. So all that was left to do now was take the finished bike rack and put it into my hitch. Now with this part, I also had an extra pair of hands. So guiding it into the hitch. Yeah, I could have struggled and done it by myself. And I'm sure in the future, I'll end up doing it by myself here and there. But my buddy was around, asked him to help me out. And obviously it was a much smoother process with two people guiding this bike rack into the hitch. Now, once it was into the hitch, there is an actual bolt, a big beefy bolt. All these bolts are big, beefy bolts. Put the screw into my hitch. There's a little retainer pin that just goes right into the end. And that was it, bike rack was now installed. Now, in order to raise and lower the bike rack, first of all, there's a little pin that's like a locking pin. And all you have to do is just pull it out, turn it 90 degrees, and it stays open, gives you the clearance so that you can squeeze the handle to be able to raise the bike rack. And also, of course, to lower the bike rack. Once the rack is in place, go back to that pin, give it that quarter turn again. It'll release the pin, locking that handle so that it doesn't get pressed by accident. The next step was to set up the chock, or this little piece that basically slides forward and back. There's a clip, just lift up the clip, give it a quarter turn to free it up. And now you can just slide this little piece up and down, depending on the size of your bicycle. And this would go in front of the back wheel. So I had put the bike up there, saw the proper measurement, slid that piece to where it needed to be. And then once again, quarter turn back, and locked it down into place. You'll wanna do that, obviously, for each bike. So your bicycles get tied down or locked down in three different locations. The first point of contact is that swivel piece that gets affixed to your seat post or to the bike itself. It has these beefy ratchet straps that are easy to operate. So you just tie them down. I was able to use them with just one hand while I was holding the camera with my other hand. So you have that first point of contact up on top, and each wheel will also have one of these ratchet straps with a big piece of rubber in there in order to protect your rims and the bike. Also one of those pieces of rubber up on the ratchet set. So as it's coming in contact with your bicycle, it will not damage it. You just feed them through, cinch them down, and then you can just press on the little locking mechanism. That releases it, and they come out just as easy as they go in. So I had everything set up and measured for the bicycles. Went ahead and put the first bicycle up there. Once again, I'm just using mountain bikes for this demonstration, so they're relatively light. I didn't have to use the ramp. They were very easy to lift, which will be very different when it comes time to the heavier e-bike. Those swivel pieces that are up on top, you're gonna have to remove one of them to give enough clearance to put the first bicycle in. Once that first bicycle is locked in to the post, then you can go ahead and put that second swivel on there. So relatively simple. I had that little chalk piece set in place, moved the bike up to it. Now the swivel piece up on top fit perfectly onto my seat post, so I chose to affix it there. From there, just easily went to the back wheel, put the ratchet strap in, cinched it down, making sure that that thick rubber piece was on the rim, protecting my rim, and then went ahead to the front tire and did the same thing. As I mentioned, on the handle part that you would use to raise and lower the bike rack, there is a thick plastic rubbery piece that actually protects the bike rack, so when you do lower it and it makes contact with the ground, you won't damage your bike rack. Now I went ahead, grabbed onto the bikes, shook them, and shook them well, and the bike rack and the bikes were moving in unison, so I know that they were fastened in there. They were there to stay. There is a little give where the pivot point is, which allows you to raise and lower the bike rack, but that is normal, very strong, thick bolt that's actually holding that pivot point together, so I don't see any foreseeable worries. Lastly, I did mention that this bike rack came with a ramp. I didn't have to use it for these lighter bikes, but I know that when my wife's e-bike comes in, it'll save a lot of wear and tear on my back utilizing this included ramp. It has a hinge, basically just open it up. There are two little teeth that actually fit right into the bike rack at the very end. Just place those two little teeth into the bike rack, angle it down to the ground, and now you're easily able to walk your bicycle up in that V groove that the ramp provides, requiring very little strength and very little maneuvering on your part. I was very impressed with this bike rack, especially for the price. It offers a lot of what the much more expensive e-bike racks offer for a fraction of the price. The steel and aluminum construction is good to go, the welds are good to go, the bolts are heavy duty. The only issue that I could see anybody having with this rack is if you plan on taking it on and off often. It is heavy, it is bulky. But the cool thing is that it does fold, folds up, folds out of the way. So if you do need to leave it on for an extended period of time, you do have those options. And you can tell these straps are huge, they're long, because a lot of these e-bikes have much thicker tires. So of course, they'll need to utilize much more of that ratchet real estate that these straps offer. So bottom line, if you are in the market for a bike rack, a bike rack that'll accommodate regular bicycles, as well as the heavier, beefier e-bikes, up to 200 pounds in total, has three main retention points for each bicycle, folds all the way up and all the way down, very budget-friendly for what you get. Definitely take a look at this two-bike bike rack from Outfitter.