Saris B.A.T. hitch rack... anybody use one?

[SLinBend]

Yes... I've looked at the review section already, but a lot of the content is old and a bit scattered. Just looking to see if anyone has recently used one of these racks w/ the new design. I'm needing a 1 1/4 hitch rack and Nashbar has these for under 150 w/ the 20% coupon applied. I've used the Yakima hitch rack (Bighorn) and just wasn't that impressed. The bikes wobbled all over the place and made a lot of contact (3 loaded). And w/ non-straight top tubes, it can be a pain getting them on. The design of the BAT actually looks like it would work better, but I've never seen anyone w/ one and no shops locally carry them. Maybe that's for a reason! Anyone have some input?

[Ed_Y]

And i''ve been completely satisfied with it. Mine is about 3 years old and I bought it used. It is very sturdy and holds bikes securely without any contact amongst different bikes. Mine is set up to hold three bikes but I could add another bracket for a fourth if needed. The 2.25 is certainly a little more secure than the 1.25 version, but I would thing the 1.25 is still more than adequate.

[Debaser]

i used an older one for a couple years, but got rid of it becasue it was a pain with small bikes and a pain with suspension bikes. it worked pretty well besides that.

[K'Endo]

I had one and after two years it broke. Fortunately, I wasn't out on the highway at the time. Fortunately, one of my riding buddies was following my car when it happened, so he stopped traffic from running over the two bikes lying on the road. The thing cracked in half just at the weld where the vertical tube joins the square horizontal bit. This was about 4-5 years ago, and I noticed they changed the way that weld is done on the newer models.

That said, I found the rack was generally okay, but any bikes with odd shaped (or small) front triangles were a pain in the arse to deal with. I've had better use out of my el cheapo, sub-$100, three-bike Swagman.

http://www.swagmanbikeracks.com/store/64125.htm

Kn.