1Up USA Quik-Rack sorta review

I bought my 07 Hyundai Accent in 2007 and immediately got a Yakima roof rack for it with 2 King Cobra trays. It is a small car so it gets a roof rack, this is almost an understood thing in the bike world. Well, either that or go the cheap way and get a trunk rack and deal with straps and bungees til the cows come home or the bike falls off.

Five years down the road and the Yakima was beginning to lose appeal. The red knobs on the King Cobra's refused to stay tight and if I tightened them down enough to hold they cracked the damn trays. They would warranty the parts but I would really rather have a system that would stay put at 80 mph on the interstate.

Then there was the sail effect. There was wind noise galore even with the fairing and with the bike on top the already tall car took on the profile of a giant sail for the wind to have its way with. The gas mileage has never been as good as I hoped with the bike on the roof.

I suppose I could bitch about drive throughs also but I don't like those anyway and never go in them, so whatever.

After much debate I decided to put a hitch rack on my tiny car. After some research I went with a hitch from etrailer.com...that was the easy part, picking the rack was more difficult. I looked at the usual suspects such as Thule and Yakima, the velcro wonderchildren from Raxter, and finally the all aluminum made in the USA 1UP Quik-Rack.

I will probably never use another Yakima product and have seen plenty of Thules with issues so they were out. It was a tough call between the 1UP and the Raxter. I went with the 1UP even though it was more expensive mostly because the mounting system looked better and they had the best reviews of the whole bunch. I'm sure the Raxter would have been fine also, I have heard lots of good about them.

I did the hitch install myself which really would have gone smoother with two people but Melissa was asleep and I was inpatient. It wasn't pretty but it ended up where it needed to be. Twenty minute job maybe? The rack itself is just ridiculously awesome. I installed it in ten seconds from box to car...ten seconds. It takes maybe five or ten more seconds to mount a bike.

Primer gray. Beautiful.

I got to test it out this morning on the perpetually under construction I65 southbound. Not much to say, it worked and the bike stayed on the car. I like it and would encourage anyone looking for a hitch rack to take a long look at these before getting a Kuat or whatever else out there. That is my "sorta review" for this and I will update with more pictures later. 1UPs website has all you would ever want to know about this.

As a closing note to anyone thinking about switching from a roof rack and concerned about the price...yeah...it's gonna cost you BUT it is possible to sell an aging roof rack. I dumped mine on craigslist in about two days.