YAKIMA TWOTIMER

If you’re in the market for a rear mounting bike rack that carries 2 bikes (regardless of frame design, suspension or wheel size) but you don’t want to spend a thousand bucks, then Yakima’s new TwoTimer is probably the perfect rack.

Installing the rack for the first time was straight forward. I simply removed the tow ball from the hitch receiver and TwoTimer slides straight in. It’s designed to fit any 1.25” or 2” hitch receiver. The hitch pin comes with a nifty lock which helps to provide some extra security (meaning some dirty scumbag won’t be able to steal the entire rack straight from the back of your vehicle!) The minimal construction of the TwoTimer makes for a very light rack, which is nice for installation and of course for manoeuvring it in and out of the garage when not in use.

The TwoTimer rack has been specifically designed to make loading your bikes as quick and easy as possible. One of the things that makes loading a bike to this rack so easy is that the rack doesn’t sit too high away from the ground and it features extra wide wheel cradles that hold the bike in place. The wheel trays also easily slide left to right to fit different size bikes and slide them side to side to help handlebars and saddles sharing the space. (Yakima want me to let you know that due to the rack’s wide tyre cups the TwoTimer is perfect for carrying Fat Bikes – even though we all know Fat Bikes are kind of lame…) Each wheel cup features a ratchet strap which feeds through your wheel. There is a special lever on the strap that allows you to really tighten them down, similar to bike shoe buckles.

With the wheels secured it’s then time to adjust the center mounted hook arms which keep the bikes upright, secure and ensuring that they don’t bang into each other (or your rear windscreen) whilst driving. The two hook shaped arms feature soft foam padding and are designed to clamp down on the bike near the middle of the top tube. The rack has the ability to fold up when not in use. There is a small red knob that when pulled, releases the rack arm and folds everything down. Oh and of course just like the rest of Yakima’s racks the TwoTimer features a built in bottle opener! We’ve been road testing this rack over the past few months and we haven’t had any problems. We’ve carried a bunch of different bikes and found that adjusting the rack to fit each bike is a piece of cake. The only downside that we found with the rack is that it doesn’t have a designated area to fit an auxiliary number plate, meaning you do have to use an auxiliary number (to avoid being pulled over and fined by the po-po!) We ended up loosely zip-tying a number plate to the rack to get around this.

All in all when it comes to value for money, you’d be hard pressed finding anything that comes close to the performance of the TwoTimer. Yakima’s range of racks are available from heaps of different stores across the country, not just bike shops. Jump onto their website for more information and to find your closest stockist.