Over the last year we have been happy owners of the Kuat NV bike rack. Furnished in a slick powdercoat and awesome orange anodized parts, built in lock, tightening hitch and a built in workstand. The only downside was we needed to resort to other measures to carry more than two bikes. Problem solved as Kuat has sent us the 2 Bike NV add-on. Now we can haul 4 bikes and work on our bikes.
Opening the box we have the center extension, and the ends of each of the 2 additional trays and a few extra bolts to make the change. Our rack was an early unit so according to the manual we had to upgrade our base…this came at no additional cost. Something to note though is that the new base lowered our trays about 2 inches. For us this did not create any issues and created more clearance between the open tailgate and the rack. This may be an issue for lower vehicles where the departure angle is reduced a bit.
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old base…….new base
The change over was straight forward by simply moving the outboard tray to existing holes and bolting up the new extension to the newly open holes. Now bolt up the two new trays, replace the end cap and attatch the workstand. All in all it took about 40 minutes to assemble. The new trays come with another built in lock, although with a different key. One side note was there were concerns of the cables needing to be longer. By moving the original rearward tray inward you do gain about 2 inches of cable growth which helps a little. I however always run an extra cable from my hitch as added insurance. Something I would do with any rack, even if it had built in locks. One thing that has changed for us was when tilted down, the now longer rack hits the ground. Which I guess should be expected. This rack is also no lightweight, especially since the change. Just goes to say how stout this rack is.
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Ready for more bikes……
One thing that would be nice would be the option of interchangable lock cores similar to other brands. Once setup the rack was stout and firm. With 4 full on DH rigs it still handled well even in rough terrain. The workstand was even easier to use and on our truck we did not need to raise the clamp which greatly improved its stability especially when working on bigger DH bikes. The NV 2 bike add on is only for those that have a 2″ hitch version of the rack. At a cost of $315 its a great addition to the already great looking and feature laden NV rack.
Overall impressions
This is a must have addition if you already own the NV rack and travel with a few friends. The built in locks are a nice addition even if they are somewhat short. They still work on 90% of bikes out there. Plus with the trays now closer you gain a small bit of growth in the cables. Everything is still functional. At least if your vehicle is a tall 4X4 you could then tilt the rack down. Although lifting it back up with 4 DH bikes may be a bit of a struggle. The inability to change the lock cores to matching ones would really be a nice addition. Time to go pick up my bro’s for this weekends race!
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Rack in the up position.