Most of the time you want your motorcycle to freely roll wherever your heart desires, but there comes a time in every rider’s life when you want your bike to stay; to stay like a loyal dog and roll no more until further notice. When that time comes you’ll need a wheel immobilizing wheel chock.
Whether you want to haul your bike on a trailer, put it up on a lift, or any other reason, a proper chock will give you the peace of mind that your baby isn’t going anywhere.
The MaxxHaul is a pretty solid choice when it comes to wheel chocks. It can take a beastly 1800 pounds of weight, which should cover all but the heaviest bikes. The wheel width this chock can accommodate is between three and five inches, which may be an issue for some sports tires or large cruiser tires. It’s got an attractive powder-coating and a hefty steel construction.
I think the Maxxhaul looks pretty functional, albeit a bit boring. It also seems that there are some issues with the design of the chock, despite it being hard to imagine how you could mess up one of these. Apparently the design allows for too much sideways motion, and a lack of a ramp makes it difficult for single-user operation when the bike in question is big and heavy, which is why you would want the Maxxhaul in the first place. Still, most people seem quite happy with it and it isn’t particularly expensive. Nor is it cheap, so I feel sort of ambivalent about it. I’d say if you absolutely need the weight capacity then the Maxxhaul may be worth it. Otherwise you’re probably better off getting something else.
This product from Maxxhaul is very reasonably priced and I must say I like the orange coloring. If you mount this chock to the trailer bed it would look pretty awesome. It has an automatic lock when you roll the wheel into the chock, and the whole process requires only one person to complete.
The negatives are unfortunately numerous for this product. You have to mount it to something; it won’t work just by itself out of the box. It also seems like quite a few people have problems with the different-sized presets, and at times have needed to drill intermediate holes to make a particular model work.
There are also numerous complaints about weak build quality, and there doesn’t seem to be any type of bike that this actually works well with. Once again, avoid.
It can be hard to find a chock that has decent compatibility with the generally wider tire that sportsbikes use – unless you want to splash out on expensive trackday stuff. The Extreme Max is a little bit more expensive than other products at the budget end of the spectrum, but it fits 17 and 21-inch wheels, including sportsbike-style wheels. I think for a $75 or so product, that’s pretty good.
In practice, owners of this chock have put a lot of faith in the product and it seems to be justified. It’s holds the bike solidly and performs well even with a bit of rough terrain.
As with many of these chocks you need to mount it to something as it won’t hold a bike up reliably just standing free out of the box. You should also be warned that the bolts that are included with this product seems to be a weak point, so perhaps replace them straight away with heavy duty versions. They won’t cost much and should give you more peace of mind.
Some sportbike owners also say that the chock is too wide for anything but a 180 or 190 section tire, so keep that in mind.
The chock itself, however, seems to be a good quality item that performs as expected. As long as you are confident that your particular bike will fit and you buy those uprated bolts, this could be a real bargain.
The Black Widow is an interesting little chock. It uses a slightly more mechanically-complex design with two independent pieces that hold the wheel. This also gives it a good level of compatibility with various wheel sizes. Officially it fits wheels ranging from 16″ to 21″, which should cover a lot of models.
This chock is also a proper free-standing model, so you don’t have to mount it on anything in order to use it. It does, however, have three mounting points for permanent applications, so your options are open.
Now, the Black Widow is considerably more expensive than most of the chocks that I looked at, but I think it’s worth it for the additional quality, the neat design, and the fact that it will work as a freestanding unit.
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