etrailer | Thule EasyFold XT 2 Electric Bike Rack Review

Click for more info and reviews of this Thule Hitch Bike Racks:
https://www.etrailer.com/Hitch-Bike-R...
Check out some similar Hitch Bike Racks options:
https://www.etrailer.com/dept-pg-Hitc...

https://www.etrailer.com
Don’t forget to subscribe!
   / etrailertv  

Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-review-th...
Adam here with etrailer. Today, we have an extremely popular bike rack. It's the Thule EasyFold XT. So this is gonna bring a couple unique features that other bike racks don't have. But ultimately, this is gonna be the easiest one to store, and it's gonna be the easiest one to hook up to your vehicle. And it does have a ramp to make it easier for your heavy bikes to get 'em all loaded up.

Next, we're going to show you a day in the life using the EasyFold XT. So give me 60 seconds, we're gonna show you how you're gonna live with the bike rack. We're also gonna do some other type of comparisons. And then of course, we're gonna go over some of the specs and the features. So stay tuned.

Whoo! Let's go! Well, that was super fun, and that's really what it's all about. But the bikes just don't show up in the woods magically. They get there with the Thule EasyFold. So let's take a look. We have to go over some specs and stuff sometimes, so might as well just get it done right now.

First things first, we can tilt it with the bikes installed. And how to do that Well, we do have a little step here. It's right next to our license plate holder, which is cool that they add one 'cause we do kinda block our license plate. So right below that is this little step. So you're gonna step on it like this.

And then, we're gonna tilt it all back. And we can leave the bikes installed when we do this. This way, we don't have take the bikes off or anything like that, and we can access the back of our hatch, which is really, really nice. But also when we tilt it away, it's gonna open the access to our ramp. It stores right with the rack, which is very unique to bikes with ramps. A lot of them don't have a place for it, but this one has one right here. The only other one that has a place for the ramp is gonna be the Yakima OnRamp. But this one stows away a little bit nicer than the other one. Just to make sure your hatch is gonna be able to open with the bikes tilted away, here's a measurement for you. Just measure from your center of the hitch pinhole on your hitch receiver. And from that point to here, which is the closest part, is about 25 inches. So open up your hatch and from the center of the hitch pinhole out to 25 inches. If the hatch is like this, which is less than 25, you're gonna be able to open it up no problem. And to put it back up into position, all you gotta do is just lift it up. And it'll snap into place, and we're ready to go. Whenever we're ready to take the bikes off, you do wanna start with the straps 'cause it doesn't really hold the bike upright. It just helps with the vertical movement. And what's unique about these is we have this little mechanism here. So instead of just pulling them down like the usual straps, we're gonna be able to pull this up, so we're gonna use less effort to get a tighter fit, and I love that. And then to release it, all we gotta do is push it down and we're good to go. And what's really unique about these straps, both on the strap side, it's gonna be able to rotate, but then also on the mechanism side, it's gonna rotate as well. So I do have it at a pretty decent angle just because we have a pretty big bike here. But this is gonna compensate for the differences in wheelbases. We aren't gonna be able to relocate these at all. With the back strap, it's the same exact thing. But notice how I have it on a pretty aggressive angle, and that's because this bike has a wheelbase of 52 inches, which is the max for the Thule EasyFold XT, but it fits. So for those really, really big bikes, it's gonna work. So let's just take this off. And now, we're done with the straps. The straps that come installed on the Thule EasyFold from the box are gonna compensate for tire widths up to three inches. But if you do have fat tire bikes, we do have a longer strap, which you can just replace this one, and it's going to be able to be compatible with tire widths up to 4 11/16 of an inch. Our AcuTight knobs is our third mounting point, and there's a lot of cool things going on here. One, whenever you're tightening it down, it's gonna give us a click, just to make sure we're not over-tightening everything. That's gonna be super convenient, especially when you're tightening down on carbon fiber frames. One thing that doesn't come with the kit that you're gonna need if you do have a carbon fiber frame is this little pad. This is gonna protect the frame from many scratches or damages. And I would definitely do this 'cause this is a high-end bike. We wanna protect o