Looking to get a roof bike rack and want to see what people are using and their reviews.
I see the Yakima front loader and Rockymounts tomahawk are on sale. Both seem to have good reviews and are probably solid options. I drive a sedan so lifting and heigh shouldn’t be an issue.
Honestly not sure why they still exist. Unsafe, horrible fuel mileage, harder to load. Risk more damage to vehicle.
IMO go hitchmount.
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RockyMounts Brass Knuckles. I’ve had a couple of them for 6+ years and they’ve been flawless!
I saw this rack as well. Good to know it is a solid choice.
I run a Yakima Front Loader and a 1Up-USA on the roof when I’m towing my trailer. The Yakima works well. I like the 1Up for its flexibility. I used to run my son’s 16” wheel bike on it. Now his 20”. It’s also all aluminum so no rust. I bought mine used locally. New they are pricy.
Depends entirely on what you drive. When I had a smaller car I preferred a roof rack as the hitches available were garbage, and the racks always hitting the ground.
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I’ve used Yakima’s roof trays in the past for quite some time. They were amazing racks. Quick and easy to tighten and loosen. No frame touching. Best roof system I’ve ever used. I have a larger car now so I use a hitch rack instead. I don’t like lifting bikes up on tall cars.
Back in the WW DH glory days, I was in a vehicle with 2 bikes on a roof rack. Rack malfunctioned with a massive wind gust along Folly Lake. Rack lifted off the roof, punching out the rear windshield causing a storm of tiny glass particles in the cabin, and both bikes still attached to the rack
Sliding down the hwy. lucky nobody was killed.
That was my sign to go hitchmount.
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Holy! That doesn’t sound like a fun time at all. To install a hitch on my car it is more work than I want to deal with. It involves raising the car, taking the bumper cover off, taillights off, removing the bumper beam to replace with the hitch beam and than putting it all back together. I have a set of OEM racks for my car and decided roof rack is the way to go on this one.
Thanks to everyone that replied. I have a few racks to price up and pick one.
I had a roof rack move on me and almost come off. nothing crazy like yours. Turned out the roof of the Canadian Honda Civics was not the same as the American ones. Instructions were for the American one only. Later in life I had a Golf Sportwagon. When two bikes were on the hitch rack, the car would flex and all the plastic interior trim would rub and make noise when going over any dips or bumps in the road. It was unsettling. Not an issue on my Outback.
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I use a combo but roof carriers mainly and leave the bars and bike carriers on most of the year, usually going down to 1 bike carrier in winter.
Hitch mount is arguably better, you don’t have to lift the bikes as high, mileage is better etc, however (being from the UK I find it crazy) you don’t seem to legally need a light and license plate board on the back of a rack if the car’s lights are obscured here. I’ve seen loads of cars around with faulty high level brake lights and 4 bikes on a hitch rack that you could barely see their brake lights. Couple that with inattentive drivers and it’s asking to be rear ended. Also this time of year hitch rack bikes get subjected to the spray of salty road slurry, no thanks.
I do have 4 roof carriers so if we go as a family I’ll maybe put them all up top but I have a Saris Superclamp 2 hitch rack and usually chuck that on, 2 on there, 2 on the roof plus a roof box. However for the most part 2 or 3 roof carriers is easiest.
The Yakima front loader looks very similar to the Thule Upride I have which is great because it doesn’t clamp the frame (important on odd shaped carbon downtubes), BUT it doesn’t have a fair amount of almost disconcerting play and the cable lock it comes with is pitiful. But it’s done 1000s of kms without issue.
No experience with the Tomahawk but it looks like a cross between the Yakima front loader and the Saris Superclamp, again looks good because it doesn’t touch the frame, although for conventional frame alu/steel circular downtube bikes I swear by the Thule ProRide, absolutely rock soild and take everything from 16" kids bikes to 29"ers, Fatbike cradles available too.
I’ve bought all my kit used, and some of it is going on 6-7 years of use, original Wingbars I had on a Subaru about 15 years ago. Definitely some bargains to be had on Kijiji/FB on the Thule stuff.
I will add that as a naive teenager I lost a bike off a friend’s roof rack on the motorway. I wasn’t totally familiar with it and the clamp didn’t quite pinch the downtube enough, so we got up to speed and it ripped open the ratchet straps on the wheels and Foxtrot Oscared down the road. If it had been a forward facing clamp it probably would have been fine. That said, the design of all the racks mentioned here virtually eliminate that risk completely by nature of their design and I still think roof racks are more convenient.
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I will never forget coming up on that scene. It’s also amazing that there was very little damage to your bikes.
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I’ve only ever owned roof systems but if I were looking to get one now I would definitely go with a hitch and not even look at a roof system. Kuat seems to make pretty good stuff, I’ve never really liked Yakima despite owning a lot of it.