Swagman Okanagan 200 Bike Rack for 3 Bikes - 2" Hitches - Wheel Mount

Video Transcript for Swagman Okanagan 200 Bike Rack Review S66SR

Hey everyone, it's Evangeline here at etrailer and today we have the Swagman Okanagan three bike platform rack. This is gonna allow you to carry around more bikes without weighing as much on your hitch receiver. It has some premium features that you might be interested in, but also some things you would have to consider for certain bikes or different shapes and sizes. We're gonna talk about all that right here. This is going to be the two bike Okanagan with the add-on included with your kit. That add-on is removable in case you wanna go back to a two bike platform rack or you can just add it on whenever your friend or family member wants to go ride with you.

The add-on process does involve four bolts on each side that you would have to attach or remove whenever you want to attach or remove your add-on. So this is something that you would invest in if you want an expandable rack that can grow with you and your family. But what types of bikes are you planning on carrying around because this will fit most types of mountain bikes and road bike shapes just because of how it holds onto them. You do have to be mindful of the weight capacity though. So the two bike Okanagan has a 45 pound weight capacity per bike, but once you add that add-on, this does have a 40 pound weight capacity.

So if you have extra, extra heavy electric bikes, especially with those batteries weighing those down, this might not be the best fit for you. But in terms of how you secure the bikes, this does make it a little bit easier to get through that process. You have two touch points on each bike, but with all the bikes loaded up together, you actually have plenty of clearance from bike to bike. That might be my favorite thing about this rack just how things are spaced apart. So even with similar bike shapes, I'm not seeing any points of contact.

Something I see very often with other more compact racks. With giving you more space for your bikes, it also does take up more space behind your vehicle. So what I do is I measure from the center of the hitch pin hole and you can do that on your own vehicle and go ahead and measure out 57 inches because that's gonna be the length this adds to the back of your hitch. If you have a small garage or need to park into a tight spot, that's a measurement to help you out to see if you will fit, but it will also affect your ability to maneuver around the rack or tilt the rack down. When you do a tilt away, it does it slightly different compared to other racks, this style.

Now if you are carrying around three bikes, hopefully you have another person there to help you with that tilt away process. I have Aidan here supporting the weight of the bike rack in the bikes. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pull the lever, close the vehicle and then just drop the rack down. Since I don't have much ground clearance on the hitch, the rack does just touch the ground. Fortunately it's the rack and not the bike supporting that weight though. And this gives us access in order to open up our hatch, lower our tailgate or open up our trunk. Plenty of clearance there. Now when you do need to bring it back up into position, you just lift up ideally holding the rack and it snaps into place. Adding the add-on causes less weight capacity back there because the further out away you are from your hitch, the more things are going to move and that is something that I have noticed. You do have a good amount of flex, especially further towards the back. So we took this out for a drive and you can see that when we do drive around, performs really well on the highway, everything stays in place, but once we hit little dips or speed bumps, you can see that rear bike jump up. Now it does really well on potholes. It just was slight shake, not much movement back and forth. It's really that up and down that I'm not the biggest fan of, but it's still nice to know that everything is still secure. That's mainly because of how the bikes are secured to the rack. You'll find really large cradles on the Okanagan and the design of the cradle looked a little different compared to what you might be used to. Oftentimes the rear cradle pivots for the different wheel bases. These cradles stay steady on the rack, that way you get zero chances of movement there. Instead, they are angled to accommodate your different wheel bases. The maximum wheel base you can carry with this is gonna be up to 48 inch long bikes. Holding that wheel down is your strap. You have a pretty long strap here and that's because you can carry fat bikes up to five inches. Securing the top of the rim, you have this very thick protector strap, so I am a big fan of that design. Once you have that strap out, you can just let it off to the side and it'll pivot away from your spokes. Up at the front you have your front wheel mast and these can be locked. So I like that design because then you don't have to deal with cable locks that you have to remove every time you drive here whether you're parked or you're driving, you know that your bikes are secured. When these locks are unlocked, you can press that lever and lift up at the mast that then releases your bike. This pushes part of the way down so it doesn't go all the way down to the ground. So you are going to have to grab your bike and go over that mast. But if you're not carrying extra heavy electric bikes anyways, that shouldn't be as big of an issue. I kind of like that design where it doesn't fully lower in this case for this rack because when those hooks do fully lower and I'm trying to load my bikes up, I am sometimes a person that uses my foot to kick that front hook up and into place. Instead, with it being there, it's easy to just grab the hook, bring it over to the bike and lock down. And when you do load your bikes, try to bring the mast as close to your front forks as possible. Just because this design, if you have it any further back, you have the potential to push it up and leave your bike a bit loose. So this allows for a safe and secure fit. Also, when you do bring your bike on there, try to push that tire as close to the rear of your cradle. This all works together to make sure you're properly using your rack. And finally for loading, unloading your bikes. This has an open goal post designed to make it easier to step into the rack to get closer to the bike that you're working on. You're not having to lean over multiple cradles that you might not be using just yet. And while you do have to step out of the rack in order to clear that design, this still makes it a lot easier to maneuver the large rack. Plus when the bikes are off, you do have a lot more clearance for visibility as well as using the rack. To stow things, you can just bring the hooks back down. I do recommend moving your front wheel hook towards the center, otherwise if it's up front it's gonna hit your cradles. There's also nothing really preventing this from bouncing back up. So you have two options here. You can either secure your cradles with the strap of the rear wheels cradle or you can double check and make sure that your front wheel hooks are tightened down to give you more tension if you find that they rattle around and are a little loose. When stowing away your rack, there's some things to be mindful of. The first is to please make sure that all your hardware is properly tightened down and that you have a good amount of tension. You want a little bit of resistance from your front wheel mounts as you maneuver them. And when you bring your front wheel mounts down, I do recommend either bringing the hook inside if you want a fully flush experience or if you find yourself bouncing around a lot and just one little extra peace of mind so that the arms won't sway out of the way. You can utilize the strap of your rear wheel to secure your front wheel hook. If those front wheel hooks are properly tightened down, I don't see them bouncing up. It's just nice to have an extra option. Another thing I noticed is that for the add-on, you do have to be a little careful with when you secure your front wheel hook. That's just because the angle of the bracket makes it where it can make contact with that plastic latch. So if you do have your hook sitting down so it sits more flush, that might be something that you do find making contact and alternatives to have the hook up and that way it hits the cradle rather than that latch. Something unique to the Okanagan is gonna be the ground clearance that it provides. It gives a lot of height off of the grounds. Now we took the bikes off so you can see its natural ground clearance, but the weight of the bike is definitely gonna affect that as it weighs down on your hitch. But if you measure from the end of the rack to the ground and compare that from that inside bottom corner of your hitch receiver to the ground, you're gonna see a height difference of 12 and a half inches. That's gonna be your shank rise. Very helpful for those speed bumps or steep inclines like driveways and hills. Your front goes up, your back goes down, but you're not as much at risk of bottoming out because of that great clearance. There is this lever here that you use to operate the tilting and folding. So when you pull on the lever while the bike rack is in that drive position, you can either let it drop or you can lift up onto the rack where it snaps into the place in your up and down compact position. This is gonna be helpful for you're just driving around town, you don't want take up too much space behind your car 'cause you're not taking up your bikes out. So measuring from the center of the hitch pin hole to the end of the rack, this now sits at about 14 inches. Big difference compared to when this was folded down. If you're concerned about clearance behind your vehicle though, because maybe you have a spare tire or your hitch is recessed, the closest point of the rack is gonna be that front wheel cradle. So measuring from the hitch pin hole to that cradle, that's gonna be six and a half inches of distance. The open goalpost design though allows for further visibility. So compared to trays that go across, you now have visibility of your license plate and your backup camera and your rear view window. The trays don't take up much space so you're very likely to be able to see your taillights, things like that. And if you're wondering about losing access to that grab handle to tilt away, the good news is when it is folded up, the kick pedal pops out. So maybe you have your bikes in one hand, you can hold the rack with the other, step on this pedal and bring the rack down. This is also gonna be helpful for if you need access into your trunk or into your hatch and you wanna quickly move the bike rack out of the way. This fits into your two inch hitch receiver and there's two things that work together to make sure this stays tight in there. The first is gonna be your anti-rattle bolt. This is going to tighten down with a wrench and then you have a little pin on the end to prevent it from backing out in case of emergency. If you want to, you can purchase a Swagman locking anti-rattle pin and that one you can put a lock on the end to keep things safe. And the next thing that you use is going to be this Allen key operated bolt. So you tighten this down and it pushes a bolt up that makes contact with the top of your hitch. I brought out the Okanagan 125, which is the infinite course shank version so that you can see a closeup of how that works. While this is technically a thumbscrew, in all reality, you are going to need the eight millimeter Allen key included with your rack. This tightens down the bolt that pushes up against that hitch receiver. I tried this bike rack out with this tightened down and with it loosened. I didn't notice as much of a difference in wobble, but that's because I focus on making sure that that main anti-rattle bolt was super secure. So while this is a nice little extra feature, focus mainly on your larger bolt and make sure that's secure before driving off and away. When you're shopping around for three bike platform racks and you're just trying to figure out what's the best three bike platform rack for me. Well something that you might notice that is very similar to the Okanagan is the Kuat Transfer. We have the three bike platform rack version out here for you so you can take a look and compare. You'll see it has a lot in common. You have that same goalpost design, you have similar weight capacity. Both of them tilt away and fold up. So some quick summary of how they stand up to each other. The Okanagan is gonna provide more ground clearance, more clearance between the bikes and more security with the trays themselves locking to each individual bike compared to the Transfer where you get a cable lock that wraps around the bike. And then I do recommend taking a cable lock off whenever you drive. Another difference is going to be the tilt away feature. I think the Okanagan has an easier to use tilt mechanism in the bike's loaded position as well as the folded up position compared to the Transfer where you do have this foot pedal. That may be tricky to reach too when you have bikes on there. However, the Okanagan given it has more clearance, also has a lot more sway. If you're thinking of maxing out the weight capacity with the top heavy bike that you are allowed to carry, you're gonna notice a lot more up and down movement on the Okanagan compared to the more compact Transfer. So that is something to be mindful of. Now for your lighter road bikes and mountain bikes, you should be fine with whichever bike rack you choose. So definitely worth looking into. I like the Transfer, I like the adjustability of the cradles, but I do understand that for some vehicles with very low ground clearance, it doesn't tilt far enough away to open up the hatch and you might find yourself bottoming out on some inclines. The Okanagan is there to solve those problems. However you get more things to think about when it just comes to movement of the rack and the bikes on the rack itself. What you saw right here was the Okanagan by Swagman three bike platform rack at etrailer.com.