The worst nightmare for anyone transporting a motorcycle via truck or trailer is the bike cartwheeling down the road behind you. Tie-downs are not a place to try to cut your budget by going with no-name tie-downs bought at a discount store. Risking the loss of your motorcycle, and a potentially catastrophic accident, is not worth saving a few bucks. Going with a name brand with a reputation is the smart and safe choice.
New Zealand-based Aerofast has been making heavy-duty tie-downs in Christchurch for over 40 years, and our test of the Aerofast 25mm Tiedowns was nearly three years in the making.
We haul bikes frequently, whether picking them up, dropping them off, or taking dirt bikes for a ride. We transport everything from a Honda CRF50F to a Harley-Davidson Fat Boy, though we’ve sworn off full dressers in the truck bed. With such frequent use, it’s no surprise we’ve gone through many tie-downs at Ultimate Motorcycling.
The Aerofast 25mm Tiedowns went into service 150 weeks ago. We conservatively estimate 600 trips with each of the two pairs we tested. That includes high-speed freeway runs, stop-and-go urban traffic, and 4x4ing off-road to remote staging areas.
The Aerofast 25mm Tiedowns are a quality product from the moment you open the sturdy cardboard box they arrive in from Amazon—you don’t want to pay for shipping from New Zealand.
Inside, you’ll find a sturdy canvas bag containing two eight-foot cam-buckle tie-downs with integrated soft-ties, plus a sheet with a QR code linking to a three-minute instructional video for first-time users. In this video, Aerofast claims to have invented the integrated soft-tie.
Unlike wider standard tie-downs, the Aerofast 25mm Tiedowns use thicker, one-inch-wide webbing. Aerofast tells us that its webbing, made of polypropylene yarn, is three times thicker than standard tie-downs. It’s also treated to resist UV damage and does not soak up liquids.
There are some advantages and disadvantages to thicker rather than wider. Thicker means narrower, so you don’t need as much clear space for them on a handlebar or around a lower triple clamp. However, sometimes the thickness is problematic when threading through a lower triple clamp, which is our preferred mounting point, regardless of the type of bike. Each PVC-coated S-hook has a safety clip to prevent unhooking when bouncing over a bump—something you never want to have happen.
Aerofast also has a thick rubber pad on the 25mm Tiedowns to protect your bike from getting scratched by the cam lock. We never saw this in action, despite transporting at least 100 different motorcycles over the life of the test. However, the pad isn’t in the way, so there’s no downside to it being there.
The tie-downs are eight feet long, which can be excessive for a pickup truck or open trailer—simply tie the excess in a knot to prevent flapping. The length can come in handy in an enclosed trailer, where the anchors may be fairly distant.
Typically, a tie-down’s wear point is the spot where the strap meets the cam. If you strap the same bike down the same way every time, it can smooth out the webbing, reducing the needed friction. In the case of the Aerofast 25mm Tiedowns, this did not happen to us. Of course, we’re always tying down different bikes in different configurations—usually one or two bikes. Because of this, one stretch of the webbing isn’t constantly being used. Still, we have had that issue in the past. After hundreds of uses, the webbing on the soft-ties began to fray, prompting us to retire the Aerofast 25mm Tiedowns. We attribute this fraying to our preference for securing bikes at the lower triple clamp, which is rougher and more likely to fray the strap than a smooth handlebar, despite being sturdier.
We also noted some wear in the PVC coating on the top S-hooks. When we transport adventure bikes, we use PSR Bike Tie-Down Clamps, which interface directly with the tie-down S-hook, so that’s likely the source of the wear.
With an MSRP of $32 on Amazon, we estimate the per-use cost of the Aerofast 25mm Tiedowns to be a half-cent. That’s as good a reason to buy a name-brand tie-down rather than an unknown brand. The peace of mind these tie-downs provide is priceless.
