Things for Your Garage

Reviews

The product was exactly what I needed. Purchased three of the same to lift bikes out of the way. Better price then local stores. I have 12' ceilings in my garage and so these get the bike's completely out of the way. After measuring and finding stud's, I determined the best mounting would be to put a 1 x 4 against the ceiling sheet rock. This made it very easy to measure and attach the lift system to the board on the ground first, then I mounted the board the the ceiling. I'm guessing it took me about 30 minutes to do the first one and then about 15 minutes each for the others. The long cord worked out great for me, I didn't need to trim anything. The pulley system isn't a fast lifting system. I take my time lifting it up and down but it requires little effort. It's clean, easy to use and the right price. Well worth it.

Product is just as described. Works great. Great price too. What's not to like. Pretty simple, actually. Pulleys, hooks and rope. Not much can go wrong.

Beware, the RAD and Racor bike ceiling mounts have minor important differences. Previously I had purchased a Racor, and I thought I was buying the same bike mount when I bought the RAD. The main important difference is the hooks. The RAD's hooks are "L" shaped; they're not "J" shaped like those in the illustration advertising the product. The RAD's hooks are also rivited onto the pully assemble and the tension cannot be adjusted. The rubber coating on the RAD's hooks is also short; it only comes up about 1/2" after the turn. If you're looking for a bike mount, the Racor is also cheaply made, but it's certainly better than the RAD for only a couple of dollars more.

This product was easy to install. I had it installed in about 15 minutes. Its easy to use. My eight year old raises and lowers his bike with ease. As fas as looks, its great because we don't even hardly notice it up at the ceiling.

While the quality of the rope could be better, they give you plenty of it and the instructions were easy to follow and hang. Although if you want to mount the bikes so they run opposite of your ceiling joists you need to add a 2x4 across them to mount the brackets. It also helps to secure the bracket to the 2x4 before you hang it.

Reviews

This product was an inexpensive and easy solution for mounting my bike to a very high garage ceiling. Instructions were simple and straight forward and now my bike is conveniently out of the way!

Getting my bike up off the floor is such a fantastic achievement. So glad to have this. It's my second one, for my second bike. Works great.

I used the PBH-1R to lift my 24' extension ladder high up to the ceiling. I have a set of large pipe hooks on my garage wall, but when I hung the ladder to the hooks, the ladder hung so low that it was impossible to pass beneath it. This Bike Lift helped the situation by raising the ladder higher. When I opened the pacakge to install it, I found two welcome surprises. (1) The hanger hooks can be rotated relative to pulley. Just loosen a screw, rotate hook, and tighten the screw. It was very helpful for me to grab side rails of my ladder. If you are interested in this product to hang a ladder and shopped another RACOR's ABL-1R lift, you have found that the fingers of ABL-1R does not rotate, and the pulley took awkward twist in the product picture. It does not happen to this PHB-1R. (2) The included rope was very long. Because I had to span the two pulley attachments further than typical bicycle application(6ft vs. 3ft), I was concerned if I could run out of rope. It turned out that I have more than enough rope even though my installation was unusual. Lifting a 45lbs ladder (24ft Type 1A 300lbs rating) is not featherweight. However, there is no feeling of rope stretching or pulley creaking. The product felt very solid. I read in some review that the included screws are prone to strip, but if pilot holes were drilled deep enough(all the length of the screw), the screw can be driven without any trouble. In fact, I broke my screwdriver bit (not screw!) when I drove the screw to a hole which I did not drill the pilot hole all the way. A last word: don't cut the rope when the lift is full up. If you want to trim the rope, do it when the lift is full down.

I currently use this for a kayak that weighs about 45lbs.It works as advertised, the rope frays slightly and may be worth replacing eventually, however it has survived over a years worth of ups and downs of my bi-weekly kayak trips. Well worth 16 bucks.

As everyone has mentioned, the rope for this product is fairly cheap - but it works. You can replace it with a better quality rope fairly easily if you feel the need. I actually used this to store a battery operated childs car (the big two-seater plastic Barbie corvette). Since this product is made for bicycles it would not hook on to the car very wheel. I built a rectangular frame out of 2x2 boards that my daughters can park the car over, and then the hooks slip into loops of rope attached to the frame. Works great for what I needed. ***NOTE: Some reviews have mentioned the side holes on the bracket won't allow you to hit the joist you're hanging the bracket from because the holes are spaced to far apart. The instructions explicitly say that these side holes are only to be used if the joists are perpendicular to the direction you're mounting the brackets; there's nothing wrong with the design. You can still use these holes to angle screws into the joist for added support, and I recommend getting better quaility screws than originally came with the product.

Reviews

I revamped my kitchen, installed the sliding pull-out unit for two 35qt waste bins. I use the silver one for recyclables and the black for regular refuse. Also purchased lids for both. Slightly expensive but worth the money. Sooo convenient and nothing standing around on the kitchen floor taking up space.

Reviews

I actuall purchased this at Lowes after finsing out that it cost the sam there as it does here and I didn't have to pay the shipping fees. I love it! It was very easy to install and the ball bearings on the chrome model are super smooth and good quality. The 35 quart bins are included and bit snugly into the wire holder so theres not alot of movement. They're quite secure. I was also looking at some of the models that are top and bottom mounted with the wood holders but don't waste your money. This quite sturdy. I purchased the door mounting kit to give it a more built in feel and it's awesome! The cans are a little hard to get out but we put a trash bag inside anyway so that's not a problem. The sliders come all the way out of the cabinet so you don't have to rach inside. This model fits an 18 inch cabinet or one side of a 36 inch wide cabinet. The 27 quart model is for a 15 inch cabinet. It doesn't specify here so just thought that might be helpful.

Reviews

I was on the verge of purchasing this unit due to the incredible reviews and ease of use. I was a bit troubled by a couple of reviews saying people could not make copies of the discs they burned from this. Not wanting to pass by what appeared to be the ideal solution, I contacted Sony and asked them if DVDs made from this unit could be copied. The answer amazed me: "The only way to make copies of the discs burned with the DVDirect units is to put the burned disc into a DVD player and connect it to the DVDirect." That's it! To clarify I asked if it was impossible to put the burned DVD from the DVDirect into a PC and copy it, the same way DVDs are always copied. She said, "Correct." I argued with her for a while asking why such a fatal design flaw existed. Her response was that it was to prevent people from "using the drives to pirate movies," since users can record movies from TV. Stupid. Beyond stupid. Of course users could use the drive to pirate recorded movies, but they could use ANY DVD recorder to do that. The majority of folks using this drive want to convert their home video collection to DVD. This drive will do that for you, but you won't be able to ever make additional copies of your videos. Unless, of course, you're willing to do Sony's solution by putting the burned disc into a DVD player, then plugging the DVD player into the DVDirect and re-recording--IN REAL TIME--what you already took the time to convert. I've heard of a select few who said they were able to copy DVDs. I'd be very interested to hear how they were able to pull that off. Perhaps they got a lemon drive that mistakenly permitted copying. After presenting this argument to the Sony rep, she essentially gave up: "I'm sorry but that's the way the DVDirect drives are designed." Well I'm sorry your DVDirect drives are designed by airheads, Sony. If you don't mind never having the ability to copy your discs effectively, by all means use this unit; it appears to be excellent video quality and ease-of-use wise. Just be forewarned.

The Sony DVDirect Recorder is perfect for our application of recording live game film. It couldn't be easier to create DVDs instantly.

This is just what I was looking for to transfer my VHS tapes to DVD. I'm doing a simple copy with no dubbing or anything fancy. If this is what you're looking for, this is the product.

This works great on most VHS tapes, However, trying to copy many SVHS tapes that I made with my camera, edited with my tape deck and are not in copyright I get a message that I can't copy them because of copyright issues. Not very friendly.

I bought this thing intending to take my family's slides and put them onto DVD's for preservation and ease of handling. I copied 200 slides onto a memory card and copied the memory card onto a DVD with no problems and great speed. When I looked at the DVD, I found that none of the images were in order. I began looking for a way to correct this, and found none. I therefore contacted SONY and explained the situation. I told them that it's sort of silly to make a DVD of a vacation, for example, and then find all the images out of order. Sony's answer via live chat was that this is what the unit is designed to do and there is no way to change it. Unfortunately, I've had this thing too long to ship it back. It copys minidv tapes with no problems, as far as I can tell, but it really stinks for still images if you care at all about having them in order. I would recommend this to no one.