Saris MHS Platform Rack Base for 1 Bike and Accessory - 1-1/4" and 2" Hitches - Tilting

Video Transcript for Saris MHS 1 Bike Rack Receiver Base Review - 2017 Toyota RAV4

Hey everybody, Zach here at etrailer.com. Today, we're taking a look at the Saris MHS one-bike package on a 2017 Toyota RAV4. This is gonna be a really cool system if you're looking to just carry one bike and you're carrying a lot of different type of bikes, this is gonna be a double wheel mount style. And that's what I mean, a couple different style of bikes. Whether you're carrying a bigger mountain bike like we have here, it's gonna have a good wheelbase, or if you're maybe carrying a smaller road bike the next day, we're not gonna have to go back and forth and make a lot of adjustments to cradles. Having this one solid tray across there and having the double arms that come up is really gonna make it easy to just take our bike off, throw the next bike on, whenever that day comes.

Now when it comes to the platform style bikes like we have here, that's what I like about these, is there's no frame contact. So whether you have a carbon bike or you've got a weird down or top tube that's kind of angled down like this, those frame styles sometimes can cause damage or it just doesn't give you the proper connection that you're looking for to keep your bikes secure. You can see here, the whole car is shaking whenever I do that. So it is very secure, super easy to use. Whenever we want to get into the hatch on this, I like that the system is back here to release this, really easy to use.

Tilt that down. Now the one thing with the handlebars I have here today is it is a little tight, does make contact right there. So if you've got slimmer handlebars, not gonna be a big issue on the RAV4. I have a fix for that later. I'll show you that once I get the bike taken off.

That's the nice thing about this, we're kind of able to move this cradle around a little bit. So we'll get this picked back up. We have it in a single bike configuration today, but if you take a look right here, we can pop this system out and we can pick up another tray, and we can connect it right here, and we're gonna get a two-bike out of this. So maybe most of the time, you're just taking one bike out, but maybe you've got a trip coming up with a buddy, you can pop in that second one there taking along so you can have two bikes on here. Take it off pretty quick and easy to just keep it as a single bike rack while you're riding throughout the week.

But just gonna focus on the one-bike today. I'm gonna show you how this releases. You've got one tire strap back here. Pretty lengthy right there. So you're gonna be to able to get around some pretty beefy tires. Seems like it's a little too long. It's got a lot of excess hanging out, but I guess it's better to be long than too short. Really easy to release this, just press that button there. Those lower really far down. So I probably wouldn't let it go all the way, but you could probably, yeah, see It's still in there, good. Like just with one, that's not going anywhere 'cause we have this wheel chock right here too. Release that, then we can get our bike off. Get this out of the way. And we can take a closer look at how this works. I'm gonna get this strap go back in place. But this slides back and forth all the way to this center section to accommodate those different wheelbases. And you can hear that ratchet down. It's not going out until I release that again. Get that put down in place. If we take a closer look here, I had a 29-inch with 2.3 tires on that bike. If we wanted to take this down to like a 27 1/2 or get it down lower to a BMX style, we can loosen this here, pull this pin out, and just adjust to the different tires that we have. But I'm keeping it on that 29. I'll lower that down all the way. Before I get those put up all the way though, I wanna show you the locks that we have here. So we've got a cable lock here in the center, so we can wrap up around our frame there. I think this is a pretty unique design, being here in the center. Usually, they're on the ends or up here on the arms. And I like that because I can put it right there around the frame. I can avoid most of my drive train or my wheels in the back. Maybe if you've got a full suspension bike like we had there, it maybe gets a little tricky, but I think having this big cable with plenty of room to get around it. This cable's thicker than most cables that come included with bike racks of this style. So I think that's a really nice design. So that was one of the things that really stood out to me when I first got my hands on this rack. Get those put down in place. There's that wheel chock. You can either go on the front or the rear side of that, depending on the wheelbase of your bike. For me, I think it makes sense putting it the way I had it. Before I fold this up, let me get a measurement real quick off the back of the RAV4 today. So from my bumper here to the rearmost part, I'm looking at 28 inches to the rear part of the vehicle. The ground clearance here 'cause we get this little guard right here, so that sticks down quite a bit. So the RAV4 is not a real tall vehicle. Right at about 14 inches. And then closest point, it's probably gonna be right about there, in that area, I'm thinking, that's about 5 3/4 of an inch. So we can get this folded up. And you see, it catches right there. So you can keep it in this position right here. I don't think it really does a whole lot of good for me there. I can open my hatch there with it like that, so that's nice. I think that's more of maybe if you've got a bigger bumper on a different vehicle, maybe a spare tire on something else. I definitely can't open my hatch right there. So it's gonna make contact. So maybe you don't wanna lower it all the way. If you're looking to just get something quick in and out, you don't have to lower it all the way. So that's kind of nice. Get that put in place. Get measurements again, show you how much we're saving there. And I'm looking at about 12 3/4 of an inch. So shaving off a lot of weight. If you're gonna keep it like this, maybe to fit in the garage. It's getting quite a bit closer to the bumper. It's at about 3 1/4 inches. This has got a little bit of movement, but I think it's got a little bit of friction there. So that's not going anywhere, so it's not getting any closer. It's just gonna probably bounce closer to the base of the rack there. And then in this configuration, we're sitting at about 11 1/4 inches of that. So now that we've got those measurements out of the way, I do wanna show you what I like about this bike rack if I'm keeping it in the single. So this isn't a quick and easy way to do this, but once you figure out, let's say you're always taking that bike out right there, most mountain bikes nowadays have pretty wide handlebars like that, so you're probably gonna run into that issue. What you you can do- Dropped my tool there. We can move this cradle back. So I'm gonna come right down here, and I'm gonna loosen this up. I think it's probably best to do it in this position instead of being upright. Well, backwards here. And what's nice is we can just move this back. Now, if you're picking up the, lemme get a better eye on it just for a second. If you're picking up the add-on, you're not gonna be able to move it in this configuration. There we go, okay. So just loosen it up that way. I don't think you should take this off when it's in that position there, just 'cause you don't want it coming undone and hitting the vehicle. So it comes with this included tool, and it's not just a regular Allen key. So it got a little security device built into it, so you don't have to worry about somebody coming by and taking this really easily. We'll loosen that up just a little bit more. All right, so then that drops down. Now what we can do is we can take this and move it back just a little bit. Get it put in place there. Let me see how that latches in place, and then we're just going to tighten this up. Well, I loosened it up there. So get that put back in place. The one thing about this is you do want it to get tight, but there is no real audible click the way a lot of things on bike racks nowadays will signify that it's tightened down all the way. Just wanna get it as tight as you can. I wouldn't overdo it by any means. So now that we have that back there, let's see if we can get this loaded up and have better clearance. Let's see here. That's what I was talking about by putting on the front of that chock. I think if I went a little bit further back, I think this bike's just a little too big for that. There's that long strap getting in the way. Got that tightened down. I think we're good there. Now we can see, I don't know which way I'm going there. We can lower it down. Now we have a lot more room to get our hatch open. So one-bike configuration, if your hitch is like the one on this RAV4, you're probably gonna wanna bring it back. That doesn't change any of the weight capacities. It's totally fine to put in that position. You're just not gonna be able to add on that second one in this configuration. So this is how I would use this one if I was just doing the one-bike. And I get that back up. If you wanna come in and take a closer look down here at the hitch, on the one-bike configuration, it's going to be in a two-inch hitch here today, but it also works with one and a quarter inch hitches. So if you have another vehicle that has an inch and a quarter, you can take this little sleeve off here, make it work there. It's gonna come with an anti-rattle bolt and a lock. The lock's gonna be keyed alike, so really gonna be nice to have one key for your whole system here to keep everything secure. Overall though, I think this is a really cool bike rack. This style is my favorite. There's a lot of people that make this style rack. I really like to finish. I like the way everything kind of works together. I like being able to add on a second bike if I want to, to pick up that system as well. I really like that this handle is large. It's really easy to use, to tilt that back. And I think it's just a good-looking bike rack. And I really like that I can get a wide wheelbase on here, get a big full suspension on there, or I can throw other bikes on there without having to move a lot of cradles around. But that's gonna do it for a look at the Saris one-bike MHS bike rack on our 2017 Toyota RAV4..