DESIGNING THE BEST VERTICAL RACK

Rock Racks were the first vertical racks on the market in New Zealand which first began with design of a vertical shuttle rack way back in early 2014 with our take on the fork cradle type system. After many hours of trial an error we finally had a design that was right but were never entirely happy with the fork cradle system and felt from market research NZ was not yet ready for this style rack so shelved that model early 2015. In 2017 we had several keen mountain bikers knowing about our first design, approach us again about designing a vertical shuttle rack. This time we went with the wheel basket system and after 6 different trial variations of angle and height we had the final wheel basket design. The key criteria was it had to fit bikes from 20 inch to 29 inch and everything from road cycles through to 29 inch 200mm travel mountain bikes while keeping the distance between bikes at a minimum to keep bikes siting within the outside of a vehicle footprint. This was no easy task, especially on a 6-bike rack but we finally had the design to do it. The next task was getting the bottom bar right so mountain bikes of any size and fork travel will sit in line with vehicle and look right but also make it that no bikes will ever bang together when driving on rough back country roads. Again we trialed several different styles and mounting it in different positions before getting the final design. After a small amount of testing it was clear bungee cords alone on bottom bar were not enough to prevent bikes banging together so we very quickly added the spacers in to ensure back wheels are locked in place. The first 4 bike prototype was then sent out early 2018 with some local enduro/down hill mountain bikers for testing followed by a 6-bike prototype. Both passed with flying colours and that was the point we started manufacture and introduced the Rock Racks vertical shuttle rack to market.