We noticed that the latest 1Up racks have an improved tongue.

The new hitch bar and tongue still have the big ball bearing to eliminate any play or rattle in the rack, but now there is a slot for a hitch pin. It arrived with a locking hitch pin with a design similar to the locks used to secure bikes to the rack.

In case you’re not familiar with this rack, here’s a link to a previous post showing the rack and pivot. It works really well on the back of our van.
Swinging Rack

Our four year old rack relies on the ball bearing, and a velcro strap in case the bearing loosens.

Without a hitch pin, we learned to check and tighten it on a routine basis.  With the pin and slot, it should be one less thing to worry about.

The same unique allen wrench is used to tighten the bearing in the hitch. It came with two new ones, so now we have four.

We removed the four bolts holding the old tongue. It still wasn’t going anywhere.

Note that the new black part appears to be wider than the old silver part. No instructions came with the kit, so an email to the company was in order.

It turns out that the mating surface is milled into the aluminum for additional support. That required loosening the big nuts on the pivot rod to release the old part. Even with the loosened nuts, it took two of us, using wooden 2×2’s as levers to separate the arms enough to switch the parts.

The new part was exactly the same size and fit fine. We put the bolts back in, tightened them up, and everything works. I’m sure this will be more secure as it locks onto the Kuat Pivot swing-away hitch.

1Up racks are expensive, but I’m pleased that new parts work with older racks. Continuous improvement along with backwards compatibility make us happy we invested in this product.