August 14, 2005
follow-up on the hitch
Well, I spoke to soon. Yes this internet is cheaper, but not as reliable as walking into a store and buying the damn thing. Turns out the bike rack came, but the hitch never arrived. Frustrated I called hitch-web.com - they were very sorry (they just drop ship from somewhere else so it really wasn't there fault). He knew I wanted the hitch before the weekend so he offered to have me bring the car to his shop, hitch-masters and they would put on a custom hitch right then that morning for the same price. Sold - I went down there and they welded, not bolted, a custom hitch onto the car and did a beautiful job. Not only will it never need maintainence (the bolt kind need to be looked after regularly) but it was rated much better and can carry much more weight.
I left there, picked up a couple of portable top tubes (for bikes with funny shapes the cannot hang on a rack) and installed the Softride bike rack in about 15 min. It's awesome, I highly recommend this rack. It locks to the hitch, can fully fold down even with the bikes loaded on it, and comes with a cable for locking the bikes to the rack. Took the bikes with us up to Santa Barbara and never heard a single rattle or any other noise from the rack.