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Every ride starts with the puzzle phase of fitting bikes on the rack. Most racks force a specific order, especially with non-standard bike frames, but the Shifts&Grins adjusts to your setup so you spend less time swapping spots and more time riding.
No more swapping bikes around to make them fit. The Shifts&Grins adapts to any setup, so you don't have to force a perfect order. The ratcheting hooks adjust to grab your bikes by the wheel or frame, while the sliding wheel cradles move independently to match any combination of sizes and styles. Just set, secure, and go.
Reaching your gear shouldn't mean unloading your bikes or wrestling with a clunky mechanism. With the push-button tilt, just tap it with your leg and keep both hands on the rack as it smoothly lowers out of the way. No awkward balancing, no hassle - just quick, easy access to your trunk so you can grab what you need and get back on the road.
Bumpy roads, tight turns, high speeds - none of it matters when your rack holds steady. With a rugged, no-wobble design and an anti-rattle hitch pin, this rack locks in place so you can focus on the ride, not on whether your bikes are shifting behind you.
Installing a bike rack can be a pain - wrestling with a heavy frame, trying to get the hitch pin holes to match up. Not with the Shifts&Grins. The hitch alignment collar guides the shank into place quickly, and the D-shaped anti-rattle hitch pin can be tightened down with one hand, so you can secure the rack in seconds and get on with your ride.
When the ride's over, the Shifts&Grins practically disappears. The shank folds up flat against the rack, allowing it to stand upright on its own - no extra stands, no awkward angles, just a rack that knows when to step aside. That means no more tripping over a bulky rack in your garage or wrestling to find space for it.
Sometimes, two bikes aren't enough - whether you're bringing friends along or gearing up for a family ride. Adding more bikes shouldn't feel like an installation project. The 2-bike add-on (B34FR - sold separately) slides into place and tightens with a simple hand knob - no bolts, no wrenches, no frustration. Expand your rack in seconds and get back to riding.
Excellent design and quite strong. Should last years.
I was looking for a 4-bike rack with the wheel holders and adjustable arms designed to hook on both the frame and wheels if necessary. This rack seemed to fit the bill, and was priced less than the Kuat, Saris, and other name brand racks. It works, but after putting it together and using it for a weekend of camping I'm not sure I would buy it again. This thing is heavy. The online reviews and videos mention that, but I never looked at the actual weight before making the purchase. This thing is 114 lbs. in the 4-bike configuration, and that's without any bikes. Luckily, I installed 4 inch by 4 inch rear camper bumper with thicker steel and re-enforcements to my frame, as well as a heavy duty receiver, or I wouldn't even think about attaching this thing to the rear of a camper. It arrived in two boxes. Both boxes were heavy duty with some pretty thick cardboard inserts, but both racks were scratched up in several places and started to rust immediately. I also noticed after one weekend that the rivets that hold the arm click mechanisms together have already started rusting. I guess they decided to use plain steel rivets. I also noticed that the collar that's designed to stop the unit from sliding in at a certain point was installed backwards from the factory. I flipped it around, adjusted it where I needed it, and tightened the knob. With the weight of the entire unit you can't get the knob tight enough to stay in position when pushing the unit towards the vehicle's receiver hitch, so it's not really worth using. One of the locking arms also had the allen screw at the bottom not fully tightened. These are obviously small issues that were fixable, but does reflect quality control. I do like the latching mechanism that raises and lowers the entire unit. It does feel solid and secure. The click latches and straps that go around the bike wheels feel a bit cheap. I'm not sure how long those will last. I was able to fit two full size mountain bikes, and two smaller kids bikes with no issues, so it does seem to work well with various bike sizes. In all, I'm a bit disappointed in the rack. If it wasn't so much of a hassle, and I hadn't already thrown the packaging away I would probably have sent the rack back for a refund and spent a bit more money on something lighter and a bit better quality.
I am an etrailer employee that tested out the rack. This is a solid rack for the price. I did have a small issue with the hitch aligner working with my OEM ford explorer hitch but I was able to loosen the screws and move the hitch aligner to make it work.
I purchased the full 4 bike kit, the thing is built well and tough, I mean really top notch quality. Price is really incredible as well, if we were to purchase something like this at a local store that may or may not fit all of our bikes we were quoted over $1k. The thing that sold me on this (other than price) was that fact that it holds bikes that have training wheels, so we are able to take our children's bikes with us without issue. There were some hiccups (UPS destroyed the first unit) but the customer service from Tegan and Lauren was outstanding, I had 2 issues and they resolved both super fast.
We out this rack to work right away, hauling 4 bikes all over Wisconsin this Memorial Day weekend. It worked great
It is a very heavy rack and is rusting within 3 months of use (and not just where it goes into the hitch), Think it would have a better paint job, and knobs losen and come off if not kept tight. Bikes go on and off quickly.
This is a very good bike rack for the price. The only thing I would suggest is to have a better hitch for the wheel strap. Also a YouTube video assembly I think would be helpful to prevent mistakes when putting together.
Fast shipping and easy assembly
I've been using this rack all spring, and it's working perfectly! I'm able to get 4 full sized bikes to fit on it.
The only issue I've had is it's a little undersized for XXL mountain bike frames (Specialized S6 or equivalent). I had to fabricate a new wheel cradle to get it to seat properly. Still giving 5 stars however because it's an edge case. If you have that size bike consider other options
Quick delivery, and everything was packaged well and I was missing nothing. Pretty easy to put together and did not take up a lot of my time. Very heavy duty and holds our bikes in place as it should. I will say, due to being heavy duty and well designed it is a little heavy, but I'm 59 and in fairly good shape and had no issues.
The quality is okay but in packagingwas missing some parts.
It is easy to install, and keeps our bikes secure during our long distance road trip. I love how easy it is to get the bikes on and off the rack and how easy it is to tilt the rack with the bikes back so we can still access the trunk. The rack is heavy, but not more than the other platform bike racks that we had been considering. I highly recommend this rack.
Every year my family picks a place for all of us to road trip for an adventure. This year was mountain biking in Bentonville Arkansas!
I have been biking for 30 years now and because I work at etrailer have used all the racks. For 4 bikes, or as a 2 bike this one is the one. Let’s be real, getting a family of 5 and extended family of 23 on a road trip is a shift show. The loading, unloading, pee breaks getting in and out is work.
This rack made a difference. The 2 bike extension attachment is far and away the easiest and simplest I have used. I was so surprised how easy it was I had my son try, and stopped a neighbor to try. Same result it took them about 20 seconds to get from 2 to 4 bike attachment.
Loading the bikes was easy not too much interference between seats and handlebars. Had to slide one set of cradles. Pretty easy stuff.
Then the tilting, fully loaded. The button and handle was easy. I’m not a spring chicken and didn’t have any trouble getting it tilted and back up.
For storage. It’s so easy to remove the extension I got to carry it in 2 pieces. So light enough to handle it. Normally carrying a 4 bike rack, that is 100+ pounds and an awkward shape to the garage is very challenging. 2 pieces of this rack was easy.
And it folds flat, game changer for the garage. Finally my rack doesn’t have to stick out for the whole family to trip over.
Excellent quality. Bikes fit well and are sturdy. The company has been very easy to work with. My only area of improvement would be that the tire supports while adjustable are very stiff so can take effort to move if needing to fit a different bike. It would also be nice to have a lock for the pin
Heavy duty rack! Assembly instructions were good and easy to follow and assembly was pretty straightforward. All the parts seem like high quality and everything fit together. I got all my bikes on it and drove around a bit and I think it will work well for us. I put on a medium 26" bike, a medium 29er, a small 29er and a small 26" all at the same time and everything fit. Rack sits pretty high so I can get out of the driveway with a few inches to spare so that is nice. I used an Allen socket with ratchet wrench to make assembly easier instead of provided Allen wrench and recommend that.
I found placing the bar hook on the bike frame holds the bike steady better than just pushing it down on the wheel if your going to drive much distance I would do that. We will see how it performs but at least out of the box it seems good.
Came well packaged in perfect condition which I was a little worried about with shipping something so heavy across the country, but even though the box was a little beat up every thing inside was fine.
This is a very solidly built, versatile rack. It's the only one of its build quality that I could find that would simultaneously carry my road bike, my MTB, and my wife's Townie cruiser. Her's was the hard one due to the fenders that have very little clearance to the tire and do not flex, so I cannot use the swing arm on her tires. With this rack, I can still fasten her bike in the step-through with the swing arm.
I also bought an anti-rattle pin and lock set from etrailer to go with this and while they are adequate, there is still a lot of vertical bounce in this rack when going over bumps. I fixed that by NOT using the shaft collar on this rack and instead installing a standard anti-rattle d-ring bracket. Bounce gone, all three bikes transported nicely.
The photo shows 2 commuter bikes, a cruiser, and a road bike all mounted simultaneously and the cruiser is the only one on which the swing arm is touching the frame, all the others have the swing arm on their tires.
Looks great, very solid, not sure about the hitch interface. So this took me longer than it should have since I used the long screws in steps 3 and 5 and had to back everything out. But the problem i had (and still have) is that in step 6, the anti-rattle hitch pin does not completely seat into my hitch (C94WR Curt class III 2-inch). I have tightened it down with a ratchet and while there is absolutely no side-to-side shifting, there is definitely up and down shifting of the rack inside the reciever. If i take the rack out of the hitch, the pin does go all the way in, so i don’t think it is a problem with the hitch, i think the shoulder on the pin is too long, or the pin acceptor inside the rack does not allow the shoulder to completely enter the shank. I went as far as taking the etrailer Hitch Pin Alignment Collar (Part Number: e98942) off my old bike rack and tighten it down between the receiver end and the rack’s built-in alignment collar but it had no effect. I am concerned that this might cause some torquing on my hitch install, so I’m going to ride around without bikes and see how much movement happens. That said, it looks great and the fold-up is very nice. It is very heavy, but that means it is very solid. I will update this review if Benton or etrailer gets back to me regarding the pin and I put some bikes on this rack. Maybe I am doing something very wrong.
Great rack but I had to make a few modifications . The hitch pin was to short so I had to grind it down away from the threads to slide it through to create enough threads opposite side for the nut and locking mechanism. Over all directions were lacking.
The bike rack itself is great. Very sturdy and very easy to use. Holds the bikes nicely when traveling.
I had a couple of glitches with shipping due to missing parts and a couple of back-and-forth shipments, but overall, the customer service was actually excellent to fix the errors.
Only downside I can give the rack is that it doesn’t have a locking hitch pin for security.
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Condition: Surface Scratches
Notes: Item has minor cosmetic scratches.
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Peter K.
9/7/2025
An update after two months of driving this around for over 1000 miles - the worry I had about vertical movement stressing the hitch has been long forgotten. I’ve been watching movement over bumps and on sharp turns, it’s as if this bike rack Is part of the car. It looks great, super sturdy and the bikes don’t shift or bounce at all. I’d give it 6 out of 5 stars if i could.