Inno Tire Hold 2 Bike Platform Rack - 1-1/4" and 2" Hitches - Tilting

Video Transcript for Inno Tire Hold 2 Bike Platform Rack Review

Randy: Hey guys, it's Randy here at etrailer.com. Today we're taking a look at the INNO tire hold. This is a platform style bike rack. It's been designed for use in inch and a quarter, or two inch hitches. And it offers the folding and tilt away function.This is going to be a great solution for transporting just about any type of bike, from one destination to the other. It's loaded with a lot of nice features which we'll take a closer look at now.Now something I really like about the design of this rack and the way it works.

And I think it's probably why it's such a favorite with a lot of bikers out there. Is that we're able to move our bikes side to side, and not sacrifice their security. So on a lot of other platform style racks, basically you're going to have a wheel cradle. This front tire has to fit in that cradle. The front tire on the other side has to fit in that cradle so that positions our handlebars and our seats generally to where there's a little bit of contact.When I installed the second bike here, I had a little bit of contact.

So what I was able to do was just let this one come forward a little bit, let that back who come in a little bit and I shifted my bike forward by about three inches. As you can see now, no contact here, no contact here. I think you can be pretty satisfied in heading down the road with your bikes in that position, knowing they're not going to rub up against each other.The tilt away feature of the rack, or all the folding position is really, it's a handle right here on the rear. You see more and more platform racks going that way, but I really like this location. I like where it's positioned, because we don't have to try to get in and under here and release something and we're not reaching through our bikes.

Right here, pull, allow it to come down till it stops. That gives us the access we need for the back hatch here. Just like when we had it in the stored position. In most situations, unless you've got a really wide set of handlebars, you're going to be able to get your back door open and closed.And you'll notice here the red sticker. This sticker indicates to us that we are not ready for travel.

Of course our bikes are tilted away. So we'll just lift up. Once it gets in the inappropriate position, that disappears and we'll know we're safe to travel.Generally with platform style racks here, they're going to tilt away from your vehicle of course, to get in the platform position. Kind of just like this. That's when we get access into that rear cargo area. With this one, however, we're going to have an intermediate position. So we can bring it down just that far. Get access into our cargo area. We're not going to have to worry about bending all the way over to let it down, or picking up that weight each time. Just a little convenient thing there that'll make using the rack a little bit easier.Now the rack's been designed to work with wheel sizes anywhere from 20 up to 29 inches, so it really covers just about all of them there. Basically, we've gotten an adjustable top hoop. You can see we've got the two tabs on each side, and those are designed to go into two of these. So we can really customize it for each application, get it in the slot you want slide it in and then just lift up. It's going to have it locked in position for us. Until we push it down and then pull out to put it in a different position.Now holding that in place is going to be the nice large steel powder coat overall hoop. That's connected right down here and our ratcheting mechanism is going to slide along. Easily push that, that releases it. As we pull it back, we can get the tension we want on it.Now that design is one of the most popular, really out there for a lot of different biking situations. Holding the bike with just the front hoop and rear hoop or rear hoop in front hoop, which ever way you do it. We have no frame contact. The only spot our bike is being touched front or back is going to be right here. So it's on the tires Protects the of our frame of our bike. This also works out really well for carbon bikes. Also for road bikes. So, just about any type of situation you're going to have, your bike's going to have the ultimate protection.Now the racks been designed for use with wheelbase is anywhere from 34 up to 48 inches. And we have a 60 pound capacity per slot. Now that's going to work out for just about all types of bikes. Even some electric bikes, they often recommend that you remove the battery on them for transport. So if your electric bike comes in at under 60 pounds without the battery, that'd be a good solution for you too.As far as tire width goes, we can go all the way up to three inch and all the way down to the really narrow 18c. To help accommodate that wide variety of tires. You can see right here in the bottom, we've got the narrow groove for the road bike. Comes out slightly for our more standard mountain bike. Then even a little bit wider here for those larger tires. And the same comes up on our top wheel hoop here. You can see road bike tire there, and then it widens out for those larger tires.Overall, the rack for a platform style rack, it's pretty light that offers an aluminum construction. It has a powder coat finish on it. So it should resist rusting corrosion for a very long time. That powder coat's going to stay looking good for a nice long time. A few of the components, some of your handles, some of your buttons here are going to be plastic. They all seem really durable.Another great feature on this rack and one than I really appreciate, is going to be the stopper. Once we have it set properly, as we slide this in and it's going to make contact with our hitch. As it does that, it lines up our pinhole so no longer are we going to have to get down there and look, make an adjustment, get down there and look. Makes it really simple. Get it in the correct position on your stop. Slide your pin in, and you're ready to tension your knob here in the back.Now a couple of measurements that'll be helpful for you determining whether this rack's going to fit on your vehicle appropriately, or even fit in your garage for that matter. In the flat or usable position. From the center of our hitch pin hole to the outer most edge of our rack, it's about 35 and a half. Also from the center of our hitch pin hole to the closest point here, it's about six and a half.You can see here in the stored position, we've really reduced the amount of rack that we've added to the back of the vehicle. It's down to about 14 and a half inches. Now this is going to help us out in parking lots if there it's a little bit tighter quarters. Or even in our garage, giving us the ability to maybe not remove it from the vehicle each time.Now before we install the rack into our vehicle, we want to make sure that our stinger's the appropriate size. This is a class three hitch, so it's a two inch by two inch receiver tube opening. Out of the box this is going to be ready to go on.If you're going to be using a class two hitch, you'll see the inch and a quarter by inch and a quarter shank here. Just gonna use the provided tools and we'll pull out the screw located here, here and here on the bottom. Then we can just take our aluminum sleeve off there, be ready to install it in that class too.We don't have to do that in our case, so we're going to just take our rack. We're going to get it slid in. You're going to see we're going to slide that in, so it lines up with our hitch pin hole. We're going to take this. And you see it's got the two, if I can get a hold of it. See it's got the two tabs that stick out. Those need to go through the two openings, rotate it. And we'll want that to face either down or up. At that point we can take our tension knob here at the back, and we'll take that knob, you can see the hex shape there. We want that to go over the hex shape on the back of our rack. We're going to turn that clockwise till we get it tightened up appropriately.And then you'll see that rectangular shaped hole, that's for our locks. So this is going to slide on. It goes into that hole. And we can use our provided key to turn that in, lock it in place. That point, let me see, that's locked on there. Our rack won't go anywhere.Now, to load your bike, of course. We need to get the rack into the platform position. Just pull our handle there, get it down. Now we're going to press the gray button. There's going to be one located on each of our hoops here. Press and then just lift. You'll want to continue to hold this as you lift your hoop up and out of the way. Once we have those fully open, ready to place our bike down.Now as we load up our bikes, just with any other rack, we want that heaviest bike closest to the vehicle, and work your way lighter.We'll place that on and get it close to center where we want it. It's time to bring our arms in. Get a little bit of compression there and we'll come to our other wheel. Doesn't matter if you use backer front, which direction, bring that in, get that nice and secure. It's going to hold our bike nice and tight. And at that point just want to do the same thing for your next bike.Now the included cable lock. You'll want to take that around the frame of your bikes. Once you've got them loaded up and it's gonna sit in the slot here on the back side of our knob. So we can secure both our bikes and our rack, with just one key. And as you can see, there's not a ton of extra slack here. But it is accessible, and it is effective.Now this set up is going to be a good way to secure your bikes to the rack, but I gotta tell you it's not my favorite that I've ever handled. Generally it's maybe a little bit easier, but getting down here in reaching underneath just offers a little bit of a challenge.Now I move really big fan of this bike rack. I liked the way it holds the bikes. I've had my hands on hundreds of different bike racks here, and this one seems to work very well. Also for a two bike platform style rack, it's not that heavy so it'd be manageable to get in the back of the vehicle.I do have kind of two knocks on it though. I think maybe other racks do it a little bit better. That cable lock is one of them. With some of the Tullys, and some of the Kuats. It's going to be stored right here. So then we just loop it around, attach it back. There seems to be a more accessible location. Rather than trying to get that cable behind the knob down there lower.Another thing, it's just a visual complaint of mine. When tightened down properly. This side of the rack here, if you can see it, it's about three quarters of an inch or an inch higher than this side of the rack. Now we've tested several of them out, and that's just the way they work. It doesn't affect the performance of the rack. It doesn't affect the quality of the rack per se, but it is a slight visual thing. And if that aggravates you, the Kuat Envy would be a nice substitute.Now that we've got our bikes loaded up, we've got them secured. We're going to head out to the test course. We're going to see what it looks like in action, put it in some real world situations, so you can see how it's going to look in the back of your vehicle.We'll start by going through the slalom. This is going to show us the side to side action. This simulates turning corners or evasive maneuvering.Once we get to the alternating speed bumps, we'll see the twisting action. This will simulate hitting a curb or pothole, or driving over uneven pavement. Once we get to the full speed bumps, we'll see the up and down action. This will be just like driving in and out of a parking lot, parking garage or driveway.