Cyclesimplex

Do not purchase a CycleSimplex rack. Before I go into detail on the reasons to avoid their products, remember you are buying a kit – absolutely nothing is preassembled- nothing. My wife and I purchased a rack to carry both Recumbent trike and a Standard bike. We paid approximately $700. For that amount of money, we expected the quality parts and directions you would associate with a made in America product. Instead, we were shorted some parts, had extras of others. For that price we also expected nicely presented easy to read instructions with quality illustrations – nope not included - you download and print instructions from their site. Parts of the instructions are just impossible to follow and some of the images are totally useless. And the machining on two parts made it impossible to line them up. I had to slightly deviate from the assembly instructions for one part because the needed small parts were missing. On their site, you see racks with professional grade wheel cradles – what you get are "Rube Goldberg" replacements that for the Trike proved to be downright dangerous. The replacement parts make the process of lifting and placement of the trike awkward requiring more precision and thus more effort. The strapping process is slower as not all the straps are attached to the rack and require storage when not in use. You need to ensure that the trike remains perfectly stable – as the front wheels are balanced on a thin beam while you attach the front strap. One time the trike slipped off the beam while I was trying to tighten a strap, my thumb got caught and hurt so bad, I thought I had broken it. – fortunately, I did not. They claim that their old version with Wheel Trays and Wheel Stops would not support heavier and longer e-bikes and trikes. Funny – other manufacturers solved this problem without diminished the value of their products. I don't know if they lack the engineering or design prowlers, do not want to spend the money to manufacture or procure upgraded Wheel Trays and Wheel Stops or just don't care about lowering the quality of your products. To find a solution, I was forced to spent hours on-line looking for compatible wheel stops – so we could safely mount the trike on the rack. Finally, I found suitable wheel stops (a solution they could have found if they made the effort to look) – they only lacked bolts long enough to attach to the rack – so after a trek to the hardware store to purchase washers and bolts, I was able to fix this problem. But we were out another $60. Then I had to locate an old fashion roof rack tray on Ebay to fix the bike portion of the rack – yet another $65. The anti-rattle devise they provide is a joke – a homemade design instead of a commercially available product – so we spent $40 to fix that problem. The beam that supports the bike does not fully line up with a corresponding part. So, the lynch pin does not pass through. Another visit to the hardware store to find a lynch pin with a slightly smaller diameter to fix this problem. And after just a few weeks of use, some parts were rusting, so another visit to the hardware store to buy a can of rust-oleum. The provide images show some of the improvements I was forced to make after purchasing the rack.