Saris Solo bike rack?

[copperlegend]

Has anyone ever used the Saris Solo bike rack? I just have my one road bike, and as nice as it is to be able to throw it in the back of my Subaru hatchback, I would love to have an external rack. On the rare occasion that I am ever transporting more than one bike, I could always put one in hte car and one on the rack. For the money, it looks like the Saris Solo would be good for my needs, but I wanted to see if any of you ladies have used one. Reviews, pro's, con's, anything?

Thanks

[schnitzle]

Has anyone ever used the Saris Solo bike rack? I just have my one road bike, and as nice as it is to be able to throw it in the back of my Subaru hatchback, I would love to have an external rack. On the rare occasion that I am ever transporting more than one bike, I could always put one in hte car and one on the rack. For the money, it looks like the Saris Solo would be good for my needs, but I wanted to see if any of you ladies have used one. Reviews, pro's, con's, anything?

Thanks

Bumping this up because I'd also like to know how people with hatch backs like the Saris rack.

[Crankin]

I have a small sedan, with seats that fold down; not exactly a hatch, but close. I have a Saris Thelma rack and it's fine. I didn't put it on this year, been shoving my bike in the back, but it never interfered with anything. The Thelma is for 2 bikes and is super easy to use. I had a similar one bike rack (same type of latching principle), but my car got rear ended and the rack got trashed. At that time, Saris did not make a one bike rack and they (Sears) had stopped making the one I had.

[malaholic]

No experience with the solo, but I have the Bones and I HATE HATE HATE it. I never really liked it to begin with as the whole thing feels cheap and the plastic ratchets are harder than they should be to operate and feel like they won't last long. I bought it a month ago because it has smaller arm width and I needed a smaller rack to fit the main triangle of my new bike. Last weekend was the first time I used it for a trip of more than 15 miles or so. Everything was mounted correctly, but one of the plastic arms rubbed a deep chip the size of a pencil eraser out of the paint job of my brand new gorgeous (expensive!) dream bike. To say I am pi$#ed off would be the understatement of the century.

Currently, Saris's website's customer support page is throwing a javascript error when I try to access their "email us" link so I conveniently can't submit anything to them there. I referred back to the email they sent me when I registered the rack online, and the link that they gave me to email them in the event of a problem yields a 404 "Page Not Found." Convenient.

I guess other people like the rack but I will never buy anything they make again. I had a Thule Passage? hatch rack before this that was sturdier and never hurt my bikes. I'd have been perfectly happy to keep it except that the arm width was too big for the new bike.

Oh, and did I mention I hate the Saris rack?

Thanks for letting me vent.