Yakima FrontLoader Rooftop Bike Rack Mount, Car & SUV Roof Carrier

Very, very happy with these racks. Bought 2 and mounted them together atop a set of cross bars I also purchased here. Worked flawlessly. Very, very secure and dependable. Super easy to install and to mount bikes onto. I’ve seen the Thule equivalent and I feel more confident in the Yakima product! Only complaint is I had to buy and install the core locks as an extra after-the-fact.

Ordered this and needed it right away. Emailed the company shipping the product that I needed the rack as quickly as possible as the delivery window indicated on Amazon extended from just before my departure to just after. They emailed me back immediately (to my great surprise) and said they would ship the rack out that same day. I received the rack ONE DAY later! Unbelievable customer service. I would buy from these guys again in a heart beat. Now on to the rack. Needed a rooftop rack and did not want to spend a fortune. Looked at the 3 most popular manufacturers of rooftop racks and read about a thousand reviews of the products. I went with what I thought looked like the easiest and most economical choice. Read the instructions and had the rack mounted on top of my Hyundai Santa Fe in about 10 min. Since then I have had the rack off and on my car with about 5 min for placement on the car and about 2 min for removal. Putting the bike in the rack is extremely quick and easy. Seat the bike in rack cradle turn large screw to secure the front tire then cinch down the back tire strap. Hardest part is getting bike on the roof of the car. This goes for any rack if you have a tall car (SUV) like we do. Once up on the roof it is a complete breeze. The rack feels solid, has a nice finish to it, and is easy to use. What more can I ask? The bike felt solid in the rack and had little play when I manually tried to rock it. I traveled 3 hours on highway and back roads (plenty of bumps) each way for my trip and more while at the destination without any issue at all. This is a terrific product and I highly recommend it. DO NOT LET OTHER BAD REVIEWS SCARE YOU OFF! One major complaint about this rack in the reviews I read is that it does not fit on all cars because the rack extends too far back and therefore interferes with opening the back hatch of the car. This is non-sense. If such a scenario occurs (as did with my Santa Fe) just mount the rack so that the front of the bike faces the back of the car. Problem solved! The other complaint I read about in the reviews was of a whistling noise with both the rack and a bike on the car. I heard no such noise despite listening for it. My only complaint about this product is that it does not come with the lock system installed. You have to buy the locks separately which cost $35 - $50. I have tried hard to find them for less without luck. You need the magic key (the one that allows you to install and remove the locks), the keys to open and close the lock, and 2 locks to have the complete set for this rack. One locks the rack to the roof and the other locks the bike to the rack. Some discount sites and Ebay sell just the locks or just the lock and keys and not the magic key. Be careful of what you buy otherwise might not have what is needed for the lock system to work. As for me, I don't live in an area where I need the locks and was traveling to a place where locks were not necessary so I did not buy them. Maybe in the future if I find I really need them. I rarely use the locking system on my Thule 3 bike rack I use on the back of my car for the other three bikes we travel with.

I would like to offer up some potential fit issues this rack is going to pose to future 27.5 bikes. I have a 2016 Specialized Stumpjumper with 27.5 wheels. The rims have an internal width of 29mm. Having a rim like this expands the profile of the tire when mounted. I have a 2.4 Maxxis Ardent on the front wheel and a 2.3 Maxxis Highroller II on the rear. With the wider rims, the Ardent measure 2.5-2.6 and the Highroller II measures 2.4-2.5. The rear tire barely fits on the rear tray of the Frontloader and the strap can only be ratcheted 3 clicks. Now as for the front tire, I found the bigger 26" setting does not make the front tire fall into the front tray where it's supposed to sit. When I switched to the 29" setting, it required more turns on the knob to tighten, but it fit like a glove. It was much more secure and tight on the rack. As for the ease of use for this rack, it is the easiest rack to mount and re-tighten. It holds the bike well at highway speeds. I love that it'll be easier to readjust without any tools in the long run. I wanted a rack that didn't clamp onto my carbon frame. I came from an INNO INA382. This rack clamps and is a very secure rack. The only nit-picking gripe I have with the Frontloader is that it takes more effort to mount the bike and turn the red knob to tighten the front wheel. Other than that, this mount is awesome and offers a lifetime warranty. It will be my go to rack from this point forward. I would like to also add that the red knob is going to give you problems down the road. The inner thread is glued to the plastic and will fail eventually. Hopefully it won't throw your bike off the rack while you're on the highway. The easy fix getting a 1/4 inch wing nut. Take off the nut at the end of the bolt, remove the red knob, place second washer into bolt, screw in wing nut, and screw bolt back on. It actually makes it easier to tighten the rack onto the wheel by flicking the wing nut.

When transporting your bike with your car you have several options - toss it in your car and hope for the best, get a hitch mount bike rack, a trunk mount rack, or a roof mount rack. My car is a coupe and has rails for a roof mount so that is the setup I currently use with this Yakima universal Frontloader. The rack itself is designed to be as easy to use as possible. It is so easy to use that I can have the rack mounted onto my car in less than 5 minutes and my mountain bike secured onto it in another 5 minutes. The rack is made from a combination of powder coated aluminum and ABS plastic setup in a way that makes the whole setup very very sturdy and rigid once it is mounted onto your crossbars. The rack is designed to accommodate wheel sizes from 20" up to 29" by adjusting the height of the front hoop. You should do this before the rack is mounted onto your car because it will be harder to do so once it's on your car unless you are very tall. To mount the rack into your crossbars, you have to align up the claws to the same length as the space between your crossbars. Tighten up the front first then the rear. Because this Yakima rack is designed for universal crossbars, you might notice that the claws may not mate up to the crossbars 100%, which was the case with my setup. This may be a cause for concern but has never been an issue for me. Mounting the bike is pretty easy straightforward but I'll go through the steps I take to mount my bike onto this rack. All you have to do is unfold the front hoop all the way until it gets stops at about 45 degrees due to the stopper at the base of the rack. The smaller rear hoop should stay down as you place your bike onto the rack. When the bike is on the rack, you have to make sure that both hoops are on the tires like a clamshell. Turn the red knob to tighten the "clamshell" so that it clinches onto the tire snugly. Once the front tire is secured, the rear tire is secured by using the provided strap. String it through your rear tire and into their ratcheting mechanism and ratchet it down. Give your bike a shakedown and you're good to go. That's it. The rack only touches your wheels and nothing else on your bike! Although the rack does come with a security cable, it does not come with any locks. That's where the optional SKS (same-key-system) locks come into play. You can order these in sets. I order 1 set of 2 locks for the rack: one lock for the security cable and another to lock the knob at the front of the rack. The locks will make it harder for thieves to steal your bike and rack, but is not perfect and that brings me to some small issues with this rack. The first issue, as mentioned, has to with the SKS locks. The locking mechanism to prevent the rack from being removed from your car seems flimsy. It consists of a a dowel moving out about 1/4" into the plastic handle to prevent it from turning, thereby prevent a someone from loosening the rack from the crossbar. The reason it seems flimsy is because if I give it a hard enough turn with my bare hands, it'll turn loose. Not that big of a deal because if someone really wanted your gear, they'll take it and the locks only delays their efforts, hopefully long enough for someone to recognize. The second issue is that the two hoops tend to "stick together" and is at times hard to separate as moving one tends to move the other. Again, not that big of an issue but if you already have your bike on the rack with one hand holding the bike and the other trying to separate the hoops, it can be challenging. Even with those two issues above, I LOVE this bike rack. It's simply, easy to use, is very sturdy, and doesn't molest your bike frame or components like some other bike racks!

Purchased this stand to transport my expensive road bike or my gravel bike while traveling to and from ride locations. I mounted it on my Toyota Rav-4 roof cross beams with no problem! Easy installation. This stand easily adapts to either of my bikes with no problems. Once the bike is in place and the retaining bar is tighten down properly, there is no unwanted movement of the bike; it is securely fastened down and no worries of any possible accidents of your bike coming unstable and falling off. I’ve traveled on highways and country roads and neither the speed of which I’m traveling or the bumpiness of the road has loosened the bike from the stand. Good product and worth the money. I may purchase another stand so I can travel with both bicycles at one time. There is only one drawback. You are required to purchase the locking anti theft devices separately from the stand. You do receive a securing cable with the stand but no locking mechanism with it. Each stand requires two locks, one for the anti theft of the stand which lock the stand to your roof mounts and one for the anti theft cable for securing the bike to the stand. Both Locks aren’t required but should be purchased for peace of mind safety.

This is actually a really nice rack. It installs really quickly and easily. I can put it on and take it off in just a minute or two. This is a huge plus for me and my needs as I don't need this all the time and didn't want to have to leave it on the vehicle all the time. It can also be locked onto the vehicle if you buy the locks to pop in, that isn't something I really need but nice to know if I wanted. Super easy to use, I even used it with my kids bike with 20" wheels and it works great. I will probably end up getting another one. I like that it only touches the tires and doesn't touch any other parts of the bike. I would highly recommend this to anyone that needs a rack for on top of their cars. I would note that this may not work for fat bikes, and possibly not for PLUS size tires. Check with Yakima on that if you have that sort of bike tire. I don't own either of those tire sizes so I can't verify those sizes fit.

Updated 6/16/16: I can now no longer recommend this tray, after having the small tire hoop and ratcheting bolt assembly become defective and no longer allow the hoop to sit flat when unscreweed. Of course it craps out after the 30-day return window at Amazon, so I have to now deal with Yakima. Original review Bought this in the hopes it would fit my 2010 Nissan Murano, even though the Yakima site doesn't list this as fitting the vehicle, after I bought a Trek Fuel EX7 and could no longer use my fork-mount tray, given the Fuel Ex7 has thru-axle design. This tray does fit the Murano, although the tray cap does rub the liftgate when it's open. This rack was very easy to mount to the factory bars on my Murano and stays on rock-solid, with no movement, and took me about five minutes to put on and secure. The biggest aspects of this that are a challenge are that the front wheel cup, coupled with the two wheel arms, are a bit awkward to get used to using, and even if you're 6'3" tall, with long arms, you're going to want at least a 2-step step stool to get up high enough to lift your bike onto any SUV and have sufficient leverage and wrangle the front wheel through the two-hoop front assembly, whether putting it in, or getting it off. I've found I need a lot more vertical clearance to lift a bike onto this compared to other full-bike style trays from Yakima and Thule. I've also found the spinning knob at the back of the smaller hoop to be mildly cumbersome, but not so much so that I find it annoying, just a bit time-consuming. I'd also like to see a longer standard wheel strap be given with it, seeing this mount is meant to handle a 29er, because it's just barely long enough to secure the wheel of a 29 x 2.35 MTB tire. The biggest wish I'd have for this is that Yakima were to find a way to dump the locking cable and add a lock to the larger/front tire hoop instead, because I'm a bit concerned that the cable could be easily cut and the bike removed. Now that I'm used to tray, I do really like it overall, it keeps the bike secure without sway or fore-aft movement, even if it does cause the bike to sit taller than other full-bike mounts.

It's hard to write a review, as I'm reviewing both Yakima and Amazon. On the one hand, I had the kit installed on my factory outback bars in all of ten minutes. This was replacing the viper I have used for about ten years and has served my well. I've been across the country multiple times with it and have no complaints. It just didn't fit on the new car. So this new one is my first time with a wheel on versus fork. I really enjoy how easy it is to load but the true style is how quickly it went on the bars. Loading the bike provided to be easy with just one knob to adjust. I can't say how steady it will be so I'll update after driving up to Seattle. So why three stars? The product arrived well packaged but the plastic on the device cracked and a piece broke off. I don't think it'll affect the product, but you buy something new and expect it to be of good quality. I can't return it cause I already recycled the box and need it for a month long trip to the coast. Like I said, I don't think it'll affect anything, but just be aware. If it breaks from just shipping that's worrisome.

Arrived quickly and well packaged. Very solid. Easy to mount the bike: place the back on the rack rail, move the bike forward and the front tire lock engages. Then tighten the rear wheel strap and the front wheel lock. The rack keeps the bike stable on the road. So far so good. Happy with purchase.

Envío rápido, buen precio y respaldo de una gran marca como es Yakima El rack se instala en cuestión de 2 minutos y sin necesidad de herramientas, compatible con bicicletas de rodado 20 hasta 29 Al cargar la bici completa hay que considerar que tendrás un perfil más alto, comparado con otros racks como el Forklift en el que retiras la llanta delantera, además de que requieres encontrar la "maña" para colocar la bici sobre todo si es pesada

Ottimo prodotto. Si monta in pochissimi minuti e in un minuto metti la bici su e la blocchi. Buoni materiali con cui è fatto ed è anche bello esteticamente. Lo consiglio vivamente.

What a great product, as intended. I received it very fast, even though I live in a remote location. Installation was very simple (make sure to read the instructions for a few tips and tricks about the rear clamp). I took it on a test drive, with my MTB on top for a 25hours trip, and it held like squashed mosquito on your windshield. I recommend this product if you don’t have a hitch. Be mindful of increased gas mileage, but that was expected.

Excelente producto