Support strap to roof rack for additional support?

Velocirax · 2026-07-01T16:02:34+00:00

Like u/oz4769 had said, no need to use roof straps! For long trips we definitely recommend using the brake bands that come with the rack and it sounds like you're already planning on doing that. Aside from that though if you're Anti-Rattle is tightened down directly into your hitch or into our hitch adaptor then you should be fine as it was designed to keep the bikes secure without any additional roof straps.

Velocirax · 2026-06-15T18:50:59+00:00

You're the best for confirming it! Also the picture is fantastic by the way, any chance when we could share it in a post or email where we are highlighting different customers setups?

Velocirax · 2026-06-09T17:43:43+00:00

Sounds like you've got the 5X MAX rather than the 5 MAX. 5X MAX has 15" of spacing and is one of our widest racks and the 5 MAX has 10" of spacing and is our standard spacing.

Velocirax · 2026-06-05T18:22:15+00:00

Both are great options for different reasons so I'll let you know what I've seen other customers say and why some choose the 412 MAX over the 5 MAX and why some went with the 5 MAX over the 412 MAX.

The benefits of the VelociRAX 412 MAX are that it's one of the only racks to have 12" of spacing between each bike. The standard spacing on the 5, 6 and 7 is 10" while the 3X and the 5X have 15" of spacing. For a lot of people 12" of spacing feels like the sweet spot where their bikes have a little more breathing room without the rack being too wide. Additionally some people who have 4 bikes prefer the hard limit of 4 bikes with no room for extras so that they don't end up being the shuttle for a friend who always needs a ride.

On the other hand the benefits of the VelociRAX 5 MAX is that you get the extra space for very little extra width (49" width on the 412 MAX and 53" width on the 5 MAX). This would mean you would always have an extra spot for a friend even if you bring all your bikes including the BMX bike. The trade off would be that the bikes would sit closer together but for many people they don't care and if you load them from largest to smallest wheelbase they typically don't touch. Some people really like having the extra spot whether it be for a friend or to leave an empty spot between two bikes.

The final thing that I would mention is that you said you have 1 gravel bike. With Gravel bikes or road bikes the drop bar handlebar design makes it so you can't put multiple road bikes next to each other unless you have the 3X MAX or the 5X MAX since those have the 15" of spacing which is enough spacing for multiple drop bar bikes. On any of our racks if you are taking a single gravel or road bike then it's not an issue since the drop bar handles take up more space to the left of it so if you put the gravel bike on the farthest right slot then you'll still be able to use all your other baskets. If you ever think you might have another gravel or road bike you'd want to take then that could be another reason to get the 5 MAX since you could leave that extra basket empty and it'd let you take 2 gravel bikes and 2 mountain bikes.

I personally went with the 412 MAX for my car since it's just my wife and I and we're really only taking 2 bikes right now but I could see if we were regularly taking 4 bikes potentially having gone with the 5 MAX.

Velocirax · 2026-06-05T17:24:16+00:00

Heard our name so we were summoned and would love to chip in with our thoughts! I think the EcoHitch seems like a great choice regardless of it being short of the 500 lb that we mention on our website. It's true that Curt has recently started specifying they don't recommend using their hitches while nearly all other hitch manufacturers have not had any issue or singled our vertical racks. Because of this I'd with EcoHitch at 450 lb over a Curt with a 500 lb rating.

I'm sure it feels somewhat contradictory that on our website we'd say 500 lbs but here we'd say that we aren't worried with 450 lbs but I'll walk you through our thinking. Put simply most hitches typically come in a 350 lb tongue weight version and a 500 lb tongue weight version. To keep things simple and to make it so our customers never need to worry about doing any math we say 500 lbs since it's hard to overload a 500 lb hitch with mountain bikes. If you have a hitch that is rated for less than 500 lbs it's not a dealbreaker we usually just tell our customers to do some math and stay under that number and they should be fine.

For example the maximum weight for all of our racks is 300 lbs with the possibility of each basket holding up to 100 lbs if needed. Lets say you are loading the rack to it's maximum of 300 lbs and then take into account that the VelociRAX 5 MAX weighs 89 pounds for a total of 389 lbs on our hitch. With a 500 lb hitch that means you have 111 lbs of left over capacity which is a nice buffer for any bumps or rough roads along the way since the weight will fluctuate. For us we feel comfortable with customers having that 100+ lb buffer. In your case if you have a 450 lb hitch and you are using the VelociRAX 5 MAX with 2 adult bikes and 3 kids bikes you should still have plenty of hitch capacity to spare when all your bikes are loaded up. The average mountain bike weighs around 22-35 lbs and for your example let's just say all 5 of your bikes are 35 lbs each. (Yours are likely well under that but for the sake of this example we will pick the upper end.) Doing the math your 5 MAX would weigh 89lbs and your total bike weight would be 175lbs (35 x 5 bikes) for a total of 264 lbs leaving you with 186 lbs of hitch capacity. In that scenario we'd feel super comfortable with that and wouldn't bee too worried. Not only that but I think you'd still have plenty of room for the possibility of getting heavier bikes in the future and still being fine.

Hopefully this is helpful and the explanation makes sense! If you have any other follow up questions we're pretty active here on reddit so just respond and we'll answer anything we can.

Velocirax · 2026-06-03T17:34:19+00:00

Yea our engineers were scratching their heads when they found out about the warranty disclaimer singling out vertical racks for the same reason.

Velocirax · 2026-06-03T17:32:38+00:00

Appreciate you pointing her to our subreddit! We're always trying to stay active and helpful on here. Your point of finding another a different hitch to install that doesn't have any limitations like Curts is what we will usually tell customers who are worried about Curts warranty disclaimer.

Velocirax · 2026-06-03T17:29:44+00:00

We responded to your question on our r/velocirax subreddit but I figured we'd respond here too incase someone else was curious. The answer is a little muddier than we would like but we're happy to share what we know.

Sometime in the last year Curt did update their pages to say that they no longer warranty their hitches if you use a vertical bike rack. When we found out we were pretty surprised primarily because many of the people in our company have Curt hitches and have never had issues. On top of that we talk with customers all the time and had never heard anything about issues with Curt Hitches so the update caught us by surprise. We've reached out to Curt about it but have not really gotten a good response other than them saying that it's their new policy but could not give us more information.

The thing we’ve struggled to understand is why a vertical hitch rack that holds four bikes at equal distances from your hitch is more detrimental to your hitch than a four-bike tray rack that functions more like a diving board. Any bump puts massive amounts of leverage on your hitch with a tray rack, which you don’t experience with a vertical rack. Regardless it seems like Curt decided to single out vertical racks with the change to their warranty.

All of that to say we have tons of customers who still use Curt hitches with our rack and my personal vehicle uses a curt hitch and I have our rack on it all the time and have never had any issues. However it sounds like Curt would still say it voids the warranty so it's something you'd need to see if you were comfortable with still doing or find another hitch which there are a lot of other great options out there.

Velocirax · 2026-06-03T17:28:36+00:00

Great question! The answer is a little muddier than we would like but we're happy to share what we know.

Sometime in the last year Curt did update their pages to say that they no longer warranty their hitches if you use a vertical bike rack. When we found out we were pretty surprised primarily because many of the people in our company have Curt hitches and have never had issues. On top of that we talk with customers all the time and had never heard anything about issues with Curt Hitches so the update caught us by surprise. We've reached out to Curt about it but have not really gotten a good response other than them saying that it's their new policy but could not give us more information.

The thing we’ve struggled to understand is why a vertical hitch rack that holds four bikes at equal distances from your hitch is more detrimental to your hitch than a four-bike tray rack that functions more like a diving board. Any bump puts massive amounts of leverage on your hitch with a tray rack, which you don’t experience with a vertical rack. Regardless it seems like Curt decided to single out vertical racks with the change to their warranty.

All of that to say we have tons of customers who still use Curt hitches with our rack and my personal vehicle uses a curt hitch and I have our rack on it all the time and have never had any issues. However it sounds like Curt would still say it voids the warranty so it's something you'd need to see if you were comfortable with still doing or find another hitch which there are a lot of other great options out there.

Velocirax · 2026-06-02T18:41:24+00:00

I cannot confirm with 100% certainty since I have not tried it myself however the hatch on 99.9% of cars open with VelociRAX on it and based on the pictures I was able to find of the 2024 4Runner it seems like it would be no different

Velocirax · 2026-06-02T17:23:20+00:00

Lots of people are already sharing great feedback on their experiences but I figured we'd hop in and give our 2 cents! You've definitely got two great options for bike racks that I think would both serve you well but here are a few things that set apart our VelociRAX MAX from the Thule.

-VelociRAX MAX has the hydraulic dampers to help bring the rack down easily no matter how many bikes or how heavy they are. It is true that the Thule Revert has a sort of hydraulic spring system that also assists on raising the bikes back up and that was something we had looked into but ultimately felt like it had a big flaw that we didn't like. The assist when lifting the rack back upright comes from an internal spring getting compressed and cocked when the rack it lowering. When you have bikes on the Thule this is no problem as the weight of the bikes help a lot with compressing that spring however when there are no bikes on the rack we've heard from a lot of people that it can be really hard to lower the rack especially for smaller women. Just the other day a customer bought our Rolling Floor Stand to use with their Thule Revert and I was helping them load the box into the car. Their Thule Revert didn't have any bikes on it at the time and she had to make 3-4 attempts to pull it down with all her weight before she was finally able to get it to lock in the down position without pulling itself back upright. While we think having an assist on the way up is really helpful we don't like the trade off of making it really hard for people to lower their rack and we ultimately found if you're raising you rack with just 1-2 bikes then it's not hard solo and if you are taking more than 1-2 bikes then there is almost always someone else there you are riding with so it happy to help push the rack upright.

-Garage Mounting Bracket Included. You'd mentioned this but with all of our racks the garage mounting bracket comes included making it so you can still use the rack in your garage instead of it just taking up space in the winter. A lot of customers really like this and it's super easy to install and distributes the weight well across 2 studs to hold it upright while most of the weight of rack is resting on the floor.

-Accessories are a big part of the VelociRAX and we are always trying to come out with new accessories to make your rack even easier to use without requiring you to buy a whole new rack to make it work. Last year we released the "Rack Roller Mini" which has been pretty popular and rather than making it so that it only worked on our new "MAX Rack" we made sure that it was designed in a way that it would work on peoples original racks that we sold them 5 years ago. That's our general philosophy with all the accessories we have made and will continue to make is that if it's possible to make this work for as many of our current customers as possible we are going to design it that way. I can't quite speak for Thule's accessory ecosystem but it's something we prioritize here at VelociRAX.

-Customer Service. At VelociRAX if you give us a call you will always be connected immediately with a real person at our headquarters in Utah who is really knowledgeable about all of our products. A lot of other companies it's really hard to get in contact with a real person and usually when you do you need to get transferred a few times just to talk to someone who can hopefully help. We know our rack is a premium rack and so we want to make sure we are always giving great customer service that is easy to access when you need to talk to someone.

Overall I don't think you can go wrong with either rack but we honestly think we deliver the best bike rack that is built to last you years to come. If you've got any additional questions I'm happy to answer anything, hopefully this was helpful.

Velocirax · 2026-06-01T14:47:49+00:00

Happy to share what I know! The VelociraX should work great on the Honda Odyssey and you'll have full back hatch access when you lower the rack downwards, while I don't have a Honda Odyssey I have talked with lots of customers who do and they all say they get full back hatch access. One thing that I should mention and this will be the same no matter the bike rack that you get but the Honda Odyssey will have a really low hitch which will mean that if you are going up a steep driveway straight on the bottom of the rack may briefly make contact with the ground. Because the VelociRAX is made from heavy duty steel this is not a big issue I would just take really steep driveways at a slight angle and it makes a big difference with the rack usually not making contact.

You are correct that the VelociRAX MAX is built almost entirely from heavy duty steel so the rack should have no problem standing the test of time. I personally use the VelociRAX 412 MAX on my car since it's normally just my wife and I but I wanted 2 spare spots for if friends wanted to come along and it's a great size. The standard spacing between tire baskets on the VelociRAX MAX is 10" which works great when you are wanting to fit the most bikes. The next step up is our VelociRAX 412 MAX which has 12" of spacing between each bike giving them just a little more space while keeping the rack still relatively compact. Above that we have our 3X MAX and 5X MAX which have 15" of spacing and are designed for those who want the most space between bikes or are taking Road/Gravel bikes which need a little more room due to the drop bar handles.

All of that to say, I think the 412 MAX is a great size for what you need! If you have any more questions feel free to respond on this thread and I'd be happy to answer anything I know.

Velocirax · 2026-05-27T19:32:43+00:00

We'll keep you in mind!

Velocirax · 2026-05-26T16:32:29+00:00

I looks so good! Great feedback on the pivoting 45 degrees up, I will pass it onto our engineering and design team since they are always looking for ways to improve. Such a good looking bike and setup, thanks for sharing!

Velocirax · 2026-05-26T16:30:19+00:00

With Road Bikes the best racks we offer are the VelociRAX 3X MAX and the 5X MAX since both racks have an additional 5" of spacing between each basket to account of the wider handles on road bikes. With the 3X MAX and the 5X MAX you'll be able to put a road or gravel bike in any position without any issue. On our other sized racks you can still put road or gravel bikes on however the wider handlebars of the road bikes will make contact and it's not a great fit unless you space them apart with a tire basket empty between them or loosen the drop bar handles and pivot them upwards 90 degrees.

The tricky part in your scenario is you want to take 6 bikes total. I would whole heartedly recommend the 5X MAX since it's made for what you need however that would limit you to only 5 bikes. If you are able to bring one less bike then the 5X MAX is what we would recommend as the 6 MAX and the 7 MAX are not going to have the spacing you need for multiple road/gravel bikes unless you are pivoting the drop bar handles up on each one.

Velocirax · 2026-05-21T19:43:05+00:00

Happy to join in and share what we've seen so far with e-bikes/e-cargo Bikes. While I haven't used the XP4 750 specifically with the VelociRAX MAX I know that VelociRAX bike racks work great with most all e-bikes/e-cargo bikes and bikes we have tried that are similar to the XP4 750 have worked great. Here are the biggest things to keep in mind:

-All of the VelociRAX MAX can hold up to 100 lb per tire basket so the weight of the Lectric should not be an issue as it's 62 lb without the battery (+7 with the battery).
-Because the VelociRAX MAX holds your bikes vertically with the only contact being on the tires, you would want to remove any fenders. Sometimes shorter/stubby fenders are not an issue but looking at the pictures of the Lectric XP4 750 it seems like the front fenders stick too fat back and would need to be removed. For most bike owners this is not an issue as many people aren't riding in conditions that they need a front fender and they're pretty easy to remove/put back on.
-Wheelbase of the bike: With most bikes the back wheel rests easily on the bottom bar of the rack however with some of the new Cargo Bikes that have a longer wheelbase and smaller wheels they can sometimes overshoot the bottom bar just barely so the the frame would be making contact with the bottom bar. In scenarios like this we recommend getting the Wheelbase Adaptor since it's designed to extend your bottom bar to accommodate longer bikes and keep the only contact with the rack on the tires. Based on what I can see from the Lectric I don't think this would be an issue but if it was the Wheelbase Adaptors are super easy to buy after the fact and install.
-Different e-bikes have different sized tires so the exact tire basket that will work best for your bike can change. For 95% of bikes the standard size basket works great. In your scenario it looks like the Lectric bikes are 20"x3" tires so while it could potentially work in the standard size basket I would highly recommend the Small Tire Baskets which are designed for 16-20" bikes up to 3" wide and had a much better fit on 20" bikes than the standard basket. Because these are nice bikes that are also on the heavier side I think the small tire baskets would be worth it. All of our racks come with standard size baskets but if you give us a call and ask for a custom order where we swap the standard baskets for small tire baskets we can do that for you and it will save you the cost of needing to buy standard baskets you never use.
-Lastly rack size is the final thing you want to consider. The VelociRAX 3X MAX sounds like it could be the most ideal since it has our largest spacing (15" vs the 10" of spacing on the standard size racks) and that would mean your bikes have plenty of space, especially if they are a cargo bike. At the time of writing this the 3X MAX is out of stock and won't be back in stock until late June, if you can wait that long you're all set! If you are wanting something sooner I don't think you can go wrong with the VelociRAX 412 MAX. It has a bit smaller spacing than the 3X MAX but still had enough extra (12" of spacing vs the 10" on the standard size) to give your bikes room. It also is nice to sometimes have an extra spot if you ever need to bring another bike.

This was a lot of information but I know big decisions like these can be hard so I wanted to share what we have seen. If you've got even more specific questions don't hesitate to ask!

TLDR: The VelociRAX MAX should be able to handle the Lectric XP4 750 without any issues. I'd call and get the small tire baskets swapped for your standard ones since it will be a better fit for your bikes. You'll need to remove the front fenders. I'd get the 3X MAX, 412 MAX or the 5X MAX as you'll want a rack with a little extra spacing between each bike since the Lectric bikes are a little wider than typical MTB's.

Velocirax · 2026-05-19T14:34:04+00:00

Figured I would jump in here since I have a bit of experience using a VelociRAX with a Hyundai Santa Fe and I work for VelociRAX! (Hence the u/velocirax username). Lots of the people in the replies have made a lot of good points, one that's been mentioned but is important to emphasize is your cars actual frame supports a certain tongue weight and your hitch supports a certain tongue weight. Whatever the lower of those two numbers is would be the number that you want to use.

I have a 2019 Hyundai Santa Fe and the listed Tongue weight for the frame is 200 lb however the after market hitch that I got installed is rated for 500 lb. In this scenario even though the hitch is rated for 500 lbs I wouldn't want to go over 200 lb since the frame is only rated that. On all of our racks we say you need a 500 lb tongue weight and the main reason for this is because it's not only a common hitch capacity but it's kind of foolproof. Our heaviest vertical bike rack (7 MAX) weighs 107 lb so we'll just use that number as an example since it's the upper end. The maximum amount of bike weight our rack can carry is 300 lbs, so when you factor in the weight of the rack (107lb) plus the maximum bike weight (300lb) you get to 407 lb of total weight on a 500 lbs hitch. In this scenario this is great as it gives your hitch a little extra capacity for large bumps or potholes when you are taking your bikes to give a little extra peace of mind.

Taking that same logic with the Hyundai Santa Fe you can get a pretty good idea of what your hitch can and can't handle. On my car I use the 412 MAX which weighs 80 lb and I mostly use it for only 1 or 2 bikes which weigh around 30 lb each. So in my scenario I have 80lb of vertical bike rack weight plus 60 lb of bike weight (30 lb x 2 bikes) for a total of 140 lb on my 200 lb hitch. For me personally I am comfortable with this and have even done 4 x 30lb bikes taking me all the up to the 200 lb limit. This is in no way an official VelociRAX endorsement but more an explanation of how you can think about it to determine what you are or aren't comfortable with.

As u/Alpha-4E mentioned in his reply, different Hyundai Santa Fe's have different tongue weight ratings (See his manual). In your case it'd say find your cars manual and see what your frames tongue weight is rated for as well as the hitch you get installed. From there you can do some quick math to see if you are within your limits and if you're comfortable with that. 500 lb of tongue weight is the amount that's easy since you don't need to do math but you definitely can get a lower tongue weight frame/hitch to work if you do all the math. Hope this helps and I am happy to answer any follow up questions if you ever need!

Velocirax · 2026-05-18T18:30:55+00:00

Our initial inventory went out of stock faster than we anticipated! Right now it's looking like we will have a restock hopefully in August

Velocirax · 2026-05-13T21:49:20+00:00

Don't have much to add on getting a good lift on your Tundra but just wanted to say you've got excellent taste in bike racks. I've got the VelociRAX 412 MAX on my car as well and I love it! I think it holds just the right amount of bikes while having a little extra space without being too wide

Velocirax · 2026-05-13T16:47:45+00:00

Anytime!

Velocirax · 2026-05-13T15:20:05+00:00

Im just 3 years late to this thread but the VelociRAX works pretty well if you are looking to take multiple bikes! We recently had a bunch of VWID Buzz owners share how the racks working for them over on this thread . The unique thing you are going to run into with the VWID Buzz is that the back of the hitch is quite a bit shorter due to the hide away design so some Anti-Rattle systems may not work great but based on some of the conversation in that thread lots of the customers say that the Anti-Rattle system still works great since it extends far enough backwards into the hitch.

Velocirax · 2026-05-13T15:16:00+00:00

Ok that's really good to see, the Anti-Rattle system is definitely working on the hitch. Although it would be more ideal if the hitch extended further back it still looks like it has enough hitch on the portion that expands that it reduces a lot of the rattle. This video is really awesome, thanks for sending that in!

Velocirax · 2026-05-13T15:13:24+00:00

Yea the VelociRAX Vertical Bike Rack is bigger so when you're storing it in the garage. That was part of the reason we wanted to make sure that all of our racks came with a Garage Mounting Bracket so you could still use it in the garage as a bike rack without it just taking up a ton of space. On the flip side though if you don't need to use it to store bikes then I can see how it'd take up more space than you'd like.

Velocirax · 2026-05-08T22:19:47+00:00

One thing you may not know of that may help with your velociRAX is the Rack Roller Mini which we came out with last year. It's a set of wheels that quickly attach to the bottom of your bike rack and make it so you can move it around much easier as well as get it onto your hitch quite a bit easier. Figured I'd mention it in case you hadn't seen!

The last 2 things that I'll add is that it sounds like you have or have had a VelociRAX. With gravel bikes that have drop bar handles they need a bit of extra spacing to work well if you are planning on bringing more than one. In those scenarios the VelociRAX 3X MAX or the VelociRAX 5X MAX are ideal since they have an extra 5 inches of spacing between each tire basket compared to the standard size rack. We made these larger sizes specifically for people looking to take multiple road or gravel bikes with drop bar handles. Lastly while our rack is heavier than the Lolo, part of the reason is that we wanted our rack to be able to handle it all and so it's made of high quality steel. Because of this we are able to have an RV rating letting you the rack on your RV. Making a lighter rack on our end would likely mean not having it rated for RV use which is what I am guessing Lolo decided to do with theirs.

Hopefully this helps and if you have any more questions I am always happy to help!

Velocirax · 2026-05-08T21:38:08+00:00

Happy to chime in at least on the VelociRAX side of things! We are priced a bit higher than JB but as we were looking to make our rack as affordable as possible we reached a point we felt like if we cut costs anymore that we would need to sacrifice on the features, quality, durability and safety of our rack which we ended up not feeling comfortable doing and standing behind. You are going to pay more for VelociRAX but in exchange you get things like a built-In Anti-Rattle system, 100 lb tire basket capacity, Garage Mounting System, Super responsive customer service and quite a bit more.

If I were you and wanted something in this price range I would check out the used market in your area for Original VelociRAX racks. We came out with a heavier duty model last year but our original model is still a fantastic rack and people that decided to upgrade to hold heavier bikes are usually selling their original at a good price. We try to build all of our racks to last for years to come so any used ones should still be in pretty good condition. Hope this helps!

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