Review: Kuat Piston Pro Two Bike Rack

Note: Guitar Ted bought the Kuat Piston Pro car rack and is not being paid, nor bribed for this review. All opinions are Guitar Ted's 

Your welcome when opening up the box

As reported in the "Rack Me" series, I chose to purchase a Kuat Piston Pro two bike hitch rack for my 2016 Toyota 4Runner with a 2" receiver hitch. I recently unboxed it, assembled it, and evaluated the assembly process. . 

The key feature here is the two-tool assembly and the simplicity of the process. There are a couple of steps which make doing the job a bit easier. I'll get around to this in this article. 

I didn't strictly time myself, but I 'think' this took about a half an hour from unboxing to finished, usable rack. This should give you somewhat of an idea of how easy the process is of assembling the rack. 

As with many items these days the instructions are online. I get how this may be a negative for some who would rather look at a piece of paper. However; the QR code works, the online instructions are clear and easy to read, and there is also a video for those who learn better by seeing. 

In defense of electronic, online instructions I will say this. They are paper-less. Good for the environment? Possibly. But they save money for consumers, and they are immediately updatable. The latter is shown in this example: The retaining arms are marked in increments reflecting the popular wheel sizes of 29"/700c, 27.5", and 26" wheel diameters. But the online instructions already say this rack is compatible with the new 32" wheels. Furthermore the online instructions indicated a running change would be made to the printed wheel size indications on the rack in the future. 

Obviously this would be impossible to communicate had the rack shipped with printed instructions. So, I appreciated this information and gaining the understanding my rack is "future-proofed" should I decide to get a 32"er. (Also - It pays to read the instructions first.....sometimes!) 

The box is rather large and heavy. I recommend two people handle it.

Contents of said box.The bag has the tools in it.

Assembly:

After unboxing the Piston Pro the instructions indicate that it is easier to assemble the rack if you put the receiver end into your hitch first. This is true in practice and what I did. However; the receiver comes out of the box in the "folded up" position, and this is not ideal. 

I would recommend the first thing you do would be to put on the Foot Lever Assembly first, then you can release the Center Beam into a horizontal position. This makes everything else go a lot smoother. 

But if your Piston Pro is like mine, you still have to do one other thing before mounting the Center Beam into your receiver hitch. That would be to take the 8mm safety hex key and loosen the nut in the end of the Center Beam which will allow the Flatlock Cam to retreat into the beam and allow you to push the beam into your receiver hitch. THEN you can tighten the hex nut until the Center Beam is secured. 

Next I'd go ahead and follow the instructions for putting the trays on, but it is a bit easier to do if you remove the safety tabs which hold the OneTap buttons in place and tap these open to allow the retention arms to swing up and out of the way. Be careful not to get bonked on the noggin when releasing the retention arms! 

Otherwise I have no quibbles with the instructions. The assembly is super-easy, in my opinion. You could use a torque wrench, as everything has torque specs, (kudos to Kuat for this), but if you do not have a torque wrench just be careful. I don't think you could over-torque the two tray bolts with the provided 8mm hex key, but just use caution and maybe check on the torque values later when you can get around a torque wrench.  

 

Impressions:

Yeah, this is a simple to use rack. I recall the old Thule T2 Pro and its release lever.  I used to have to lift, jiggle, and futz around with it to move it out of the way when accessing the lift gate. The Kuat works so much better. 

I have to hand it to Kuat for informing buyers via the online portal that this rack will work with a 32"er. Not that I am getting one......yet. Maybe someday. But if I do? I have a rack for that, which is nice to know.  

The Piston Pro with its trick, one touch opening retaining arms is fun, and should make mounting a bike a breeze. I can offset bikes as well simply by maneuvering the retention arms and offsetting the bikes in the trays. This is a cool feature. The old Thule had a fixed bike placement and that was the only option you had to carry a bike. 

The Kuat rack isn't necessarily a whole lot lighter than a Thule T2. Maybe somewhat, but it still is an awkward thing to carry alone. It wasn't terrible, but I wouldn't want a flimsy rack either, so.... 

Next thing to do will be to get some bikes on there and go somewhere to ride. Stay tuned....  

A Meet-Up

Image courtesy of Kuat Rack

 That Kuat Piston Pro rack I bought wasn't going to fly from Chicago to Waterloo, Iowa by itself, so a meet-up was planned between Ari and I so I could get it from him. I mean, the whole buying a rack thing was pretty much based on seeing Ari. 

Not really, but kinda......

Anyway, I bought it from the shop Ari works at and that was in a suburb of Chicago, so I had arranged with Ari to meet him on Saturday in St. Donatus, Iowa to pick it up. Mrs. Guitar Ted came along, and as a surprise, so did Ari's wife. After Ari and his wife gave us a nice pair of flowering pots and after we moved the rack into the back of my 4Runner, we took a little walk at Ari's suggestion. 

Ari wanted to show me the Catholic Chapel and cemetery there up on top of a short, steep hill not far from the cars. So we hiked up on a beautiful late April afternoon to check it out. Things like this are not heard of or seen much in Iowa. You wouldn't think Iowa could be this pretty, or have this rich history, since it is "corn country", fly-over territory, and is "boring". But if this is you, you don't know nuthin' about Iowa. So, I thought I'd share some images of the St. Donatus Catholic Church which is on the list of National Historic Places.

 

After enjoying the beauty of the church's interior space we walked out back to take in a view of the cemetery. Ari said further on up the hill there is another small chapel, but we didn't hike all the way up to see it. 

 

There was another church across the valley up on the next hill from the one we were at. 

The St. Donatus area is VERY hilly and gorgeous right now with all the green things on full display. We walked back down the hill and entered Kalme's Restaurant in St. Donatus. It has been around for 150 years or more there. I described it as a restaurant which is everything Cracker Barrel wishes it could be. 

Anyway the meal was fantastic and the company was even better. But eventually it was time to go back home. Ari is a dear friend and seeing him on the traditional weekend of Trans Iowa was a treat. We spoke of plans for him to come visit in Waterloo sometime so I could take him out on our local gravel.  

So, that was the trip to go get the rack. Now it will be unboxing time soon and I'll get around to my impressions of this thing soon enough. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more on the rack.  

Rack Me: A Decision Has Been Made

My first car rack. A Thule T2. Circa 2007

The decision on which car rack to purchase has been made. First off, I want to thank each and every reader here who took the time to post in the comments and share their rack thoughts. Many of you went to great lengths and  detail in those comments and all of those comments were dear to me. 

It was immediately apparent in those comments that you all had very passionate feelings about your car racks. There was some advice, but mainly a sharing of those feelings and experiences. I learned a lot and went back and looked at a few things after reading some of your feedback. 

Let me also say that I don't think there would have been any "wrong" decision to be made between the One Up, Saris, or the Kuat racks. It seemed apparent that there were enough positive experiences to recommend any of those brands. However; it did come down to a few important details, to me at any rate, and I made a decision.

I decided on a Kuat Piston Pro.

Now, based upon a few comments, and on some outside research, here is what made me go in this direction, just for the record:

• There were some customer service concerns from some of you regarding One Up.
• There were some wear related concerns with One Up racks, which wouldn't have been too big a deal, except none of the other choices did not seem to bring up any wear related concerns at all. 
• Saris isn't well represented here in my area, and their design (of the rack I was most interested in) lacked ground clearance when going up driveway inclines, and the like. It was mostly the ground clearance issue which finally made me look at Kuat instead. 
• Kuat seemed to get high recommendations in terms of customer service.  

Kuat Piston Pro

While the Piston Pro model was a bit more than I was wanting to spend, it has features which I found to be attractive, and its ease of use seems to be at least on par with One Up and maybe even better. 

And let's be honest, while One Up did their design which caught on and was/is successful, now every rack manufacturer has a version of this design out. Some have improved on this design, and I think Kuat has made some advancements which make using their version of this design a little more user friendly. 

Plus, the shopping experience online was much easier and more pleasant in the case of Kuat, which helped me navigate my options. One Up's site - at least for me - was not fun to get through to a point where I understood what I needed with regard to options to satisfy me. That and the price was no better, apples to apples, with Kuat. 

One more thing: I don't have any chance to see a One Up rack locally, but my friend N.Y. Roll has a Kuat rack, so this was influential, I will admit. 

Okay, that's it, really. Now for the actual rack to appear and then I'll get into my thoughts and impressions of it. Again - thank you all  that commented in the previous "Rack Me" posts. You did make a difference.