I wish someone had told me the one thing bike rack reviews never do. We’re putting the Seasucker bike rack to the test and IF it works, it will save you thousands of dollars.
This is a bike rack, and it could save you thousands of dollars. But to do that, you’ll have to overcome the fear that most cyclists have of bolting two expensive, 30-pound mountain bikes to the top of your car, relying solely on these little rubber suction cups.
We’re putting the SE Sucker Mini Bomber to the test so that we can tell you what no other review of this product does.
While you’ll have more money for super-spending bikes if this works, because one of the great joys of being a cyclist is new adventures, new highways, gravel roads, and mountain bike trails, when the roads outside your door get well, a little boring.
But before you feel the joy, there’s the pain in the neck, the utter hassle, not to mention the expense, of the traditional bike rack.
“Bike rack” sounds so simple. It’s a rack on your car. You put your bike on it, and you go. Right? Right?
But until you buy your first bike rack, you may not realize that it’s actually two, no, three, sometimes four parts that all need to go together and fit your bike.
First, there are the base racks. They fit right onto your car and they support the actual bike rack or bike racks. You really only want to have them on your car when you’re using them. They’re really noisy at highway speeds and they can lower your fuel efficiency by up to 25%. And unless you have a garage, you have to store them somewhere. And for us, that means here.
Two base racks, two bike racks, none of them want to stand up. All of them want to fall on you when you open it in here. Yeah, right. And then usually early in the morning when you’re flushed with the anticipation of a wonderful ride ahead, you have to put the racks on now.
If the Seasucker bike rack works, we can store it here because, in my opinion, it’s the only thing I want to see in the trunk. And putting it on is as simple as a quick wipe of the pads, the surface of the car, and pumping up these little valves until you can’t see any more orange. And that, friend, is it.
But before we can talk about how this rack saves you thousands of dollars, we have to talk about the elephant in the room: your fear.
You could just picture it: bikes cartwheeling down the highway, mug shots on the evening news. I totally get it. It’s enough fear to keep you from giving this a go. But that’s what we’re here for. So let’s go for a ride on the busiest highway in Toronto.
How are they holding up? I know what you’re thinking: yeah, but what if it rains? It turns out that rain only serves to enhance the suction cups’ grip at speed. So let me give you the real scoop on the Seasucker: We’ve been using this rack for five years, in the rain, in the baking sun, in the cold like it is today, and we’ve never had a rack that worked as well as this one. FYI, we bought this rack with our own money. We have no relationship with the SE Sucker brand.
Each one of these cups has 210 pounds of pull strength. So, over all six cups, that’s 1,260 pounds. Do you think if bikes were flying off roofs of cars, these things would be on the market? Feeling a bit safer yet? Good!
Because now we get to the part where this rack really shines and saves you so much money.
Unlike most bike racks, Seasuckers can hold any bike: gravel road, mountain bike, even an e-bike. For this particular model, this is a universal fork mount, and there’s a variety of these Husky plugs for your particular setup.
Every part on this thing is replaceable. And importantly, unlike most racks, they fit any car, any van, SUV, even a supercar, even a rental car.
So think about your next cycling trip. You could slap this baby (or the smaller single-bike version) on your rental car, and you’re good to go.
And that’s a great segue into the thing that no review of the SE Seasucker ever tells you: it’s the last rack you’ll ever buy.
Take it from us: we’ve been taking our bike somewhere almost every weekend for years. But then it came time to sell the car. And even though we bought the same model, just a newer version, as the old car, when
it came time to put the base racks on the car, they no longer fit. Of course, after you’ve shelled out for a new car, the next thing you want to do is have to buy new base racks. But we did. And then guess what? The bike racks didn’t fit the base racks because they were a different shape. So we had to buy an adapter part, which just made a janky process a little jankier.
And then after a few years, you know, there was another new car and guess what? More new racks. So I want to tell you what I wish somebody had told me like 20 years ago: every time you buy a new car, you’re likely going to have to buy a new rack.
But with the Seasucker, we could just pull it out of the trunk, pump up a few tabs, and get on our joyful way.
And use all that money we save over the years and decades on the ludicrously expensive bikes we all love to ride.
And on that note, I’m buying my first gravel bike. Also, more complicated than first expected, but I’ve come up with a framework to make sure I get just the perfect bike. You can check that out here.
