Malone PilotSolo 2 Bike Platform Rack - 1-1/4" and 2" Hitches - Frame or Wheel Mount

Video Transcript for Malone PilotSolo 2 Bike Platform Rack Review

Speaker 1: Today, we're going to be taking a look at the Malone Pilot Solo Two Bike Platform Rack for inch and a quarter and two inch hitches, part number MPG2109. The Malone Pilot Solo is a two bike platform rack that can carry bikes of varying styles, ranging from your fat bikes to your mountain bikes to road bikes to alternate frame bikes and some kids' bikes as well.One of the biggest features about this bike rack is the fact that it can tilt away from the vehicle with both bikes still attached to get rear hatch access. To do that, there's a pin up at the front here. It's just a snap pin, you just pull it on the other side and pull it out. You have to lift up just a little bit to get it loose. As it stands right now, it's not falling or anything like that.

What we have to do is pull out, and that is what enables it to tilt. Now, we have full access to our rear hatch to get what we need.This bike rack has two points of security. We have this integrated cable lock here to secure our bikes to the bike rack. Then, we also have a locking hitch pin, which will secure the bike rack to your vehicle. These are not key inaudible 00:01:17.To hold our bikes into place, there's going to be three points of contact.

One of these points of contact, you're going to have another option. We have this padded hook that will go around the tire, which may make contact with the forks 00:01:27 here, but it is padded to ensure that it won't get scratches on them. Or, in the case with our bike here, we can put it around the frame of our bike as well. In some cases, if you're required to do this, you may need an adaptor bar, also sold by Malone, to secure that down.With our hooks, these do ratchet and lock into place. Turn it to the side here to unlock it, and move it freely.

When you're ready to tighten it down, you turn it to the locked position and then it'll start to ratchet into place like so. Our other two points of contact are going to be the wheel cradles and the straps here, which will hold those in place. Those also have two points you can choose from. This is going to be the smaller mountain bike here. We have it around our first configuration.

With our fat bike, we have it on the outer portion.Speaking of the wheel mounts, these will accommodate tire sizes from 20 to 29 inches. With fat bikes, it can fit up to four and a half inch tires. We've gone ahead and taken the bikes off, so we can show off some of the other features.When we have the hooks folded down, we have it pushed in all the way in the locked position. Then, at the ends here, we have our wheel straps holding our hooks in place. The cradles are adjustable by loosening and tightening these bolts with the included Allen key. When not in use, we also keep our integrated cable lock, put together like you see here, and right now, we have it in the loading position. In this position, we still do have access to our rear hatch to get what we need. You can also fold this up against the vehicle for those close quarter situations such as parking or putting it in your garage. We'll show you how to do that.To fold it up, we'll come to the base here where we have our snap pin. We'll pull it loose, just like we did when we tilted it forward. Now, we'll just push it up, line up the holes at the top here and resecure it. Now, this is the folded up position and we have much more clearance to the rear to put it in our garage or to park.Finally, you can switch it from a two inch to an inch and a quarter hitch by removing the bolt in the center here and removing the sleeve. This can work with multiple vehicles with multiple hitches.When comparing this bike rack with others, two that come up are going to be the Kuat Transfer Two Bike Rack, part number TS02G, and the Thule Doubletrack Bike Rack, part number TH990XT. Out of the three of these, the most economic is going to be the Malone Pilot Solo. However, there are a few differences. With the Kuat Transfer, the fat bike adaptor is sold separately. The lock set is also sold separately to connect the bike rack to the hitch. It grips the bikes by the wheel. The tilt function, however, is a little bit easier as it uses a foot pedal to tilt it down. You don't have to remove any pins.With the Thule Doubletrack, it also has an easier tilt because it uses a handle up at the front. Again, you don't have to remove any pins. There is no fat bike adaptor available for this bike rack at this time. The bikes attach to the bike rack by the frame only. Now that we've gone over some of the features of the bike rack, let's go ahead and show you how it installs.We'll first place it into the hitch of our vehicle. At this point, you get to choose which point you want to use as your connection point. We'll line up with our pin hole, and then we can insert our anti-rattle bolt and tighten it down with our ratchet. As we tighten it down, you can see the shake and play is going away. It's nice and tight. On the other side, we have our locking end. Slide that on, put our cover on. Now, it's secured to our vehicle.Now, we can fold our bike rack down to its loading position. To do that, we'll come to the pin at our base here. It's just a regular snap pin. You pop it open like so, and pull out the pin. Now, you're able to fold it down. As we do so, you want to make sure that you're going to line up the pin holes with this one here. As we fold it down, you may notice that the pin holes aren't exactly matching up at this point here. You simply push in, and that'll get them to line up. As it stands right now, it's not going to tilt down. If you wanted it to tilt down, you pull out so you can gain rear hatch access with your bikes attached.Now, we'll get our bike rack ready to take our first bike. We'll first unlock our cable lock here. Pull those apart, just push them off to the side. Then, we'll release our hooks. They're being held in place by our wheel straps, then we'll put them into the unlocked position and push them completely up and out of the way. Now, before we place our bikes on, we want to make sure that our cradles are loose. We're going to sit our bike down first, get our spacing down for our cradles, take the bike back off, and then tighten the cradles down at these screws here with the included Allen tool.The first bike we're going to be placing on is going to be a fat tire bike. We found the best way to do that is to actually have the hook up, and then we'll be sliding it in through the side. Pulling it back up, switch this to the locked position and then we'll ratchet our hook down into place. Now, we can attach our wheel straps. We want to make sure we go through the spokes, and really strap that down. We'll do this for the rear tire as well.Now, we'll take our second bike, place it upfront here. Right, now we can take it off and tighten down our cradles again. Bring our hook up, and we may need to tilt it out to get our hook up. Put it in the locked position, and put it down. Notice how you can go by either the frame or the tire, depending on your preference. This is padded, so will not damage the shocks 00:08:25 or the fork mounts 00:08:26 of your bike.Final step is to wrap our integrated cable locks around our bike frames. These are retractable, so you can have a little bit of slack as you pull them out. In some cases, it's going to be all the slack that you can get. Pull the key. Now, your bikes are secured to the rack as well. Now, we can take it out on our test course and show you how it looks.Here it is on our test course. We'll start by going through the slalom. This is going to show us the side to side action, which simulates turning corners or evasive maneuvers. Next, we're at the alternating speed bumps, which will see the twisting action. This will simulate hitting a curb or pothole or driving over uneven pavement. Finally, we have the full speed bumps where we'll see the up and down action, which is just like driving out of a parking lot, garage or driveway.There you have it for the Malone Pilot Solo Two Bike Platform Rack for inch and a quarter inch and two inch hitches, part number MPG2109.