Most Popular Bike and Hitch Lock for 2019 Honda Civic

I chose the Chinook mainly because it came with locks for the hooks to keep the bikes secure, and a lock for the hitch pin to keep the rack itself secure. I also like that it has ratcheting top tube hooks, rather than hooks that secure with knobs. Assembling the rack was straightforward and took maybe 20 minutes. I did it with the rack off the car. I installed a trailer hitch on my 2009 Civic Si sedan (this was not NEARLY as easy as assembling the rack!) and hooked up the Chinook. It's fairly heavy, but appears to be about the same weight as most other platform style racks - even lighter than some of the higher end ones. It slid right into the receiver. The hitch pin/lock is easy to use. I loaded my XL 29" hardtail mountain bike and my wife's M comfort/step through bike onto the rack - the sliding trays were easy to move with the bike off the rack and I used a rubber mallet to fine tune their positions with some gentle taps once the bikes were on. One of my concerns was that the hook wouldn't go low enough for my wife's bike. I put the low hook on first and had it facing the outside as that's where my wife's bike was. The hook went down plenty far to secure the comfort bike. I did put small towels between the bikes and the hooks, as the "padding" on the hooks isn't very soft. The bikes didn't interfere with each other and they didn't touch the car. I was even able to open the trunk with the bikes on the rack in the upright position. The rack can tilt away from the car which would probably be helpful for cars with larger trunk lids. We set off for the trail. The rack did bounce around a bit while driving down the road (probably due to the low load rating for the hitch for the Civic more than the rack itself) but everything held tight and got the bikes to the trail with no issues. Unloading and reloading at the trail was quick and easy. Overall, I am very happy with this rack! It does everything I wanted a rack to do at a very affordable price.

So far, not good. The product arrived with the 2” hitch adapter already on, and so tightly on that I cannot remove it with the tools that I own.