When you have as many bikes as we do, finding a place for them all can be a challenge- especially living in an urban environment like San Francisco where living spaces tend to be small. Even in our new Portland digs, we are finding space to be at a premium. Fortunately, there are quite a few options available for stashing bikes in one’s home or garage.
Initially available through Performance Bikes, the Xport Bikes Aloft 2 is a freestanding strorage rack that is unique among the offerings in that it offers modular accessories for customizing the rack. The adjustable arms have the capacity to hold two bikes each. As they are adjustable, they can be raised or lowered to accomodate frames with dramatic angles.
The arms each come with a cradle, and we ended up wrapping the lower arms with bar tape, as it made it easier to set the bikes up and remove them. While the rack states it can handle four bikes total, we rarely stored four downhill, freeride or all mountain bikes on it. With the various frame types, it was difficult to set them all up. I was also somewhat nervous about bikes coming off. However, it would accept hardtails and road bikes easily. The drawback was that with four bikes loaded, it was visually quite messy. When displaying two bikes, it looked asthetically pleasing.
A storage hook bar is also available. However, with four bikes and gear hanging off of it, it isn’t the best looking set up. The storage hook bar wasn’t the best the most solid attachment, but if adjusted well, it rarely caused issues.
Overall, it has been a useful item to have around, and it works as advertised. Once we removed the stickers on it, it was a nice looking way to display bikes.
At a retail price of $89.00 it is fairly reasonably priced, although Performance puts it on sale periodically.
Get one here at Amazon.com
