Yakima Bike Racks

[maninblack]

I recently put on a Yakima Rack System for my mountain bikes. I've been very pleased with the quailty, fit and stability with the bikes on top. To my suprise the wind noise with the bikes on top is very tolerable and I'd go so far as to say hardly noticible with the sun roof shade closed.

Without the bikes on, and with the bike mounting brakects still on the towers, wind noise is not of concern either. I get an occational whistling sound at certain speeds, although thankfully not sustained nor at freeway speeds.

Installation is a breeze and fitting the bikes is pretty straight forward with a lightweight bike and a step stool. Without a step stool it would be a real challenge.

The cofiguration I'm using is 4 Lowrider Towers. 2 58" crossbars and 2 King Cobra Bike mounts.

I'm glad I chose to go with the towers and crossbars. Yakima does offer some mounting brackets that will clamp to the factory crossbars. The crossbars however are arched. So unless you had one bike in the very center you would be dealing with some serious outward lean. I had read a post on here before choosing my rack about a system that mounted to the factory crossbars. While the author did get it to work, he eventually took the racks off due to concern about the leaning of the bikes. Here's the thread http://www.toyota-4runner.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5229&highlight=bike+racks

The base rack will hold any number of other accessories so its worth the investment if you plan on adding cargo racks or containers in the future.

Here are some pics.

 

[Luxury]

Nice. I hadn't thought about the bikes leaning. I'm even more glad that I opted for the Lowriding setup. I'm currently only using it for snow and surf boards, but I'm glad to here it will be easy for me to add bikes up there. Thanks for the great pics.

Can you give me distances so that I can try and reduce my windnoise? Mine got pretty damn loud. It even felt like it vibrated the whole car.

 

[leftyrb]

I have the Yakima system on my 04 4Runner, but have the Yakima fairing, and the bike mount where the front wheel is removed. Very little wind noise.

 

[jsarche]

That system looks great on your truck. I was torn between going with the Lowrider towers or attaching things to my Megawarrior basket, and decided the towers werent' worth the extra expense. So when I ski, I attach my ski racks directly to the factory crossbars. When I go biking, I slap on the Megawarrior. Yakima's stuff is great, and it lasts forever -- I've got parts I've been using more than 10 years.

 

[pablodoc]

i have a yakima rack as well but i found that it was making way too noise doing 70mph, i ended up installing the yakima fairing ($50). worth every cent and my noise level is way down.