Video Transcript for A Closer Look at the RockyMounts Gigawatt Bike Rack on a 2024 Subaru Outback Wagon

Hi, everyone. Aiden here with etrailer. If you own a 2024 Subaru Outback, but you've also got some really heavy E-bikes that you sometimes have trouble transporting and you need a bike rack that's gonna work for you and make it easier to load those bikes, then the Rocky Mounts GigaWatt I think is gonna be a really great solution for you. The GigaWatt comes with an included loading ramp and it's really long too, so it's gonna make it very easy to ramp the bikes up and down. We'll see that in just a little bit. You're also gonna get an 80 pound weight capacity per bike, which is pretty much as heavy as it gets for a two bike rack like you see here.

It's really impressive and the tracer spaced really far apart from one another, so you're very unlikely to have bike to bike contact issues when you're loading those bikes up. You're gonna be holding those bikes primarily by our front tire using the wheel hook, so that makes no frame contact. It's a good option then for carbon frame and alternative frame bikes and that wheel hook has an extra strap. Generally when you're hooking your bike up, you want the wheel hook to sit as close to the forks as possible, but if you've got front fenders, you're gonna have to put it somewhere further away. If you do that, you'll use this strap to wrap underneath your wheel and back up top wrapping around the wheel entirely.

Therefore avoiding the front fender but still giving you a solid hold on your front tire to keep it from twisting. You're gonna have the ability to tilt the rack away with bikes loaded here just by pulling the pin and lowering the rack down. I will say that where the pivot point is located, it does put a little bit more of that weight on you. So if you're going biking with a friend, have them maybe help you lower it down if you are looking to make this process a little bit easier. But it does give you plenty of room to get into the back of your Outback.

Maybe have a place to sit down and change your shoes before or after your ride, put on your helmet, things like that, or grab out your loading ramp. The loading ramp, like I said, is very long, but it does fit in the back of the Outback. You just have to feed it in and take it out a little bit more carefully. But I do really like the fact that it's so long because it's gonna give us a more shallow angle of approach and because it's solid, you don't have to worry about it being flimsy. So when you are ready to use it or unload the bike, make sure you just have it lifted up flat like this and I'm just gonna take it over to the rear of the tray where you can hook it up and start to undo our bike from the rack.

To get that bike unloaded, we'll start at the bottom where we've got two wheel straps to take care of. These are gonna be done first because they don't hold the bike upright or anything like that. They're just secondary support. So just push in on that button and push the ratcheting strap out. I'm might have to press a little hard if you maybe tightened it a little too much like I did and on the front wheel it's gonna be an adjustable rubber strap that stretches over. I'm just gonna take care of that right now and we can move up to that hook. There's gonna be a little trigger latch that you can squeeze, push up and out on the hook. Most of the touch points though are color coded blue, so they're really easy to tell apart from the rest of the rack. And once you're done, all you gotta do is wheel it down off of the ramp. These trays are just really wide and it makes this whole process extremely easy. And with the Outback sitting a little lower to the ground, that angle of the ramp is not very aggressive, so it makes this process a lot easier too. When it comes to bike racks with ramps included, there's a couple other major players that I'd probably compare this to and it's gonna be the Hollywood Racks Destination E-bike rack and the Yakima OnRamp LX. Of the three choices, the GigaWatt is by far my favorite ramp because it's extra long. It's gonna be one solid piece and it's very easy to hook up and use. While it's maybe a little bit harder to store than the other ones, I'd much rather take that knowing that it fits with our Outback and in exchange just get an easier to use higher quality ramp. There's a few measurements I want to check out before we fold the rack up though. The first is our ground clearance at the back end, the lowest point to the ground's about 19-1/2 inches, which really is pretty good. You get a good rise from the shank. So while this is a longer rack, I don't think you'll ever have to worry about ground clearance issues on your Outback. Taking a look at that length though we can see that from the bumper it's sticking out about 34 inches. That is a little bit more than most two bike racks, especially on the Outback. So when you are driving around with this loaded, just know that it's gonna be adding a little bit more length and it's probably gonna be a bit harder to park with. But again, in exchange for that, you get trays that are spaced much further apart, so when you are ramping the bikes up and down, it makes it a lot easier 'cause you're not really competing for space between the two trays. We can fold this up though for easier storage using that same pin that we pulled to tilt it, only this time pushing up and in. This is gonna save you a ton of space. From the bumper now only sticking out 12 inches. This is extremely compact and it's gonna make it much easier to drive around with and park with. Taking a closer look at the hitch, we see it's fitting inside of our two inch by two inch receiver tube and it does come with a locking anti-rattle bolt. That anti-rattle is gonna keep things solid and secure in the hitch and the lock will make sure that no one can mess with your rack when you're not around. But overall, I'm a big fan of the GigaWatt. Of all the bike racks we carry here at etrailer that come out of the box ready to go with a ramp and that are e-bike capable, this is by far my favorite package because I think it's just gonna be the easiest to use with the ramp and it's gonna give you the widest range of possible bikes you could load on here and not interfere with one another. I'd say its biggest downfalls are how big it is physically and how big it's gonna be weight wise because the bigger the rack gets, the heavier it also gets. So if your strength just isn't quite there, you're looking at a ramp bike rack because you want to make it easier to load your E-bike and you're not super comfortable managing the weight of the rack on your own, this might not be the best option for you because of that. If that's the case, I would say look into something like the Thule Epos. That's gonna give you a pretty solid weight capacity of up to 75 pounds for one bike. So long as your two bikes don't exceed 140 pounds total and there is an option to buy a ramp attachment separately. It's a shame that it doesn't come out of the box with it, but that's one of the easiest to use bike racks out there and it's still very capable in terms of weight capacity. But if you like the features you saw for the GigaWatt and you don't wanna buy any extra pieces separate, then I think this is gonna be a really excellent option for the 2024 Subaru Outback. My name's Aiden and thanks for watching.