TESTED: Rhino Rack Pioneer Platform

Rhino Rack is proudly Australian born and owned, offering the most diverse range of roof rack products available on our shores. The company is committed to reducing their environmental footprint and offering customers the highest quality products in Australia, NZ and the USA.

With a focus on camping and adventure, our sport of mountain biking falls right into the mix with a large portion of us engaging in any number of “outdoorsy” activities which are well catered for by Rhino Rack. Their products are sleek, durably powder coated black and the ideal match for riders whom wish to carry their bikes on the roof and or wish to carry additional gear outside the cabin or tray. With domestic travel and road trips pretty high on the agenda for most of us over the coming year, or years, these sorts of cargo options are well worth checking out.

Rhino Rack’s Fit My Vehicle matrix will bring up all the options available for your vehicle, simply select the make, model and year along with your intended use and wait for the delivery driver (or three in our case).

With a 7 Seater 4×4 that often shuttles 6 bikes, I opted for a Pioneer platform sitting on Rhino Rack's super neat Backbone mounting system which is itself powder-coated steel and is manufactured to follow the contours of the roofline and allow the Pioneer rack to sit as close to the vehicle as possible. The platform would allow me to carry additional bikes on the roof when required along with gear bags, trail building equipment or a vantage point for photographers.

On build and shuttle days I often have gear, people and bikes spread between vehicles and it often turns into a real shit show and game of find the glove or helmet and so on, so getting everything in and on my car will be a real luxury and save time and head aches.

Installation of the Rhino Rack Pioneer Platform

A few days out from a week off grid in the Snowy Mountains, a burly trio of delivery drivers piled out a truck and delivered the biggest cardboard box I have ever seen, along with a few smaller ones. With an afternoon storm forecast and departure drawing near, I crammed the detailed fitting instructions and managed to fit the whole system in 1.5 hours solo.

Removing the factory roof rails and installing the robust steel Backbone sections was super easy, opting for a little anti-seize on the threads for good measure. Next was getting the platform located correctly, great diagrams in the manual made this much easier.

Everything lined up perfectly, even the measurements on where to position the adjustable slats so the sunroof doesn’t interfere were spot on using the tape measure printed on the underside of the track. The hardest part was cleaning out all the leaves and debris in the tracks and lifting the Platform up there which I highly recommend getting help for as it was 27kgs and the size of a sheet of board.

With our Pioneer rack fitted before a Snowy Mountains trip and a huge storm overhead with severe hail warnings, we loaded up all our gear and packed bikes, skis, snow shoes, shovels and the winter tyres with no real idea how the week would pan out. Had I known that the skis, shovel and recovery gear needed to be packed up there for this trip, I would have got a few add on accessories for the Pioneer Platform system, but it was nothing a few tie downs couldn't sort out.

Loading up

When loading up the platform, albeit not with a month long expeditions worth of equipment, I was surprised at how rigid the platform is when up there arranging gear. The profile of the aluminum extrusion keeps the overall height down to a minimum (47mm) and the rigidity is super high all while equipped with channels that allow for wiring and a multitude of accessories such as shovel mounts, spare wheel mounts, a canoe, jerry can and the list goes on and on and on.

As I really only planned to put bikes and bags up there, the trusty octopus straps were employed along with small pieces of foam under the skis and shovel so they didn’t cause damage or clang about on the dirt roads.

Rhino Rack provided a Thru Axle mount with both Boost and Non-Boost hardware which slid easily into the keyed channels and tightened down with the provided security Torx keys. I orientated the bike facing the rear of the vehicle as bugs and chips to the forks stanchions are not my cup of tea and it did made it possible to load the bike by standing on the rear tailgate, tightening up the thru axle and then tightening the rear wheels strap from the passenger side.

On the Road

Under 80km/h the Pioneer platform isn’t really noticeable, Rhino have done well to create a incredibly strong, light, adaptable platform while keeping the profile to a minimum. Pushing past the 90km/h mark the wind noise along the leading edge of the platform is noticeable, not loud but certainly there. This is partially due to the leading edge sitting right above the sunroof, but compared to other racks I have used on other vehicles the noise was pretty good. If I used the Disco frequently or were doing longer trips with gear up there I would consider a Rhino Rack wind Fairing which looks to mount perfectly into the space between vehicle and Platform but with 1lt of diesel per hundred kilometers more than normal in a laden land yacht it's not high on the list of needs.

There was no noticeable additional body roll on the highway and no movement of the bike in the thru axle holder whatsoever, the mounts are solid and clearly over engineered and have no signs of wearing.

Verdict

If you and the family or friends like getting out of the suburbs and into the hills or coastal regions and like to take your bikes, fishing gear or any other activity multipliers and struggle to find the room in tray or cabin then I can highly recommend a Rhino Rack Pioneer Platform. The views from up top are pretty stunning too! The Pioneer Platform is a whole lot more than just a bike rack, offering a complete system for transport of outdoor toys and essentials.

RRP: Prices vary by vehicle and platform size
Backbone Mounting System – Landrover Discovery 3-4 $506
Pioneer Platform – 2128mm x 1236mm $1169

From: rhinorack.com