by shotinthedark » Mar 28, 2012 11:16 am
I purchased one of these racks from Ebay recently. It shipped from the Ukraine so it took a few weeks to arrive. I needed it for our trip to Rusty's cave this past Monday, but I knew it wouldn't arrive in time, so I went ahead and bought a Petzl 5-bar J-frame rack so I could have one for the descent. The gear4rocks rack arrived today and I have had the chance to inspect it and compare it to the rack used on the trip.
Let me just say that this rack is exactly what you would expect for $43. The first thing that jumped out at me was that the hyper bar is on the bottom where you attach the rack to your harness. Secondly, it's not stainless steel so it will definitely rust in no time. All the bars are hollow except the hyper bar. There doesn't seem to be any easy way to disassemble the rack to replace bars. There are marks where they ground off the excess metal at the end of the legs and on the metal stopper ring at the bottom.
This thing just looks like a piece of shit, especially when compared to the quality construction of the Petzl rack. The two bottom bars on the Petzl have notches to lock into the frame to prevent the bars from popping out. There is nothing like that on this one. Also there is no groove for the rope on the bars. I haven't tried the rack out yet, but I will definitely have to test it above ground and at a low height before taking it into the field.
My personal verdict is spend the extra money for a high quality stainless rack. I can see this rack being very stressful to use, as I would be constantly worried about it opening or slipping during a descent. Bottom line: it will probably work well enough on short drops (maybe 40' max) but I wouldn't trust it on anything longer. And you might be able to get a couple uses out of it before the bars start to rust, but not much more than that. I would recommend using this rack to lower loads down a pitch, but I definitely wouldn't trust my life to it except MAYBE as a last resort. I carry my figure 8 to backup my rack, but I suppose I would use this thing in the off chance that my primary rack shatters and I drop my figure 8 right after that.
Don't kill yourself - drop the extra money and get a rack you can trust.