Yakima High Roller Bike Rack
March 11, 2009
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If your bike is your most treasured possession, chances are you’re riding it most of the time. At least I am – but when I’m not riding it, I like it to be riding on my car, so I can take it with me to ride later. Until this year, my bike had to ride IN my car, because I didn’t have an external bike rack that would carry my fancy pants full-suspension bike. Then Yakima hooked the Geargals up with the High Roller bike racks, and now my bike can ride in style.
The High Roller installs in a snap onto any type of crossbar. Mine went on my Yakima crossbars and, naturally, that worked really well. The High Roller has three mount points and just screws on, and has a cable lock to lock the rack onto the bars when there’s no bike in it. It took about ten minutes to put the High Roller on my car since I already had the crossbars on, and I’m pretty picky about getting everything even so you could probably install it in five minutes if you are less fussy. Putting the bike in the rack is super easy too – just put it in the gutters, push it against the front hoop, turn the knob until the back hoop tightens, and then ratchet the back wheel strap down. You’re done! Of course, if you’re not tall or if you have a tall car, getting the bike up there can be kind of a hassle. I struggled with it for a few minutes and ended up standing on a bucket (and bringing the bucket to the trail head to stand on as well) to get the bike up and down before remembering that my car has an adjustable suspension and would politely lower itself for me if I asked it nicely by pressing the “down” button (no, really, it really does have an adjustable suspension, it’s quite handy). When I first put my favorite bike up there, I was a little nervous driving off – it doesn’t really LOOK super secure in the High Roller, but trust me – if it’s properly mounted, it’s not going anywhere.
The High Roller is designed to not touch the bike frame, so if you love your bike, you’ll love the High Roller. My favorite thing about this type of rack is that I don’t have to take my front wheel off – that just makes for extra hassle and less bike time. I’m not crazy about the cable lock – it’s kind of a pain to lock and unlock it all the time, but if you don’t lock it to something, it will just flop around and bang up the top of your car. I’d much rather have some sort of wheel hoop locking mechanism or something. There’s probably a reason Yakima didn’t go for that option, but I don’t know what it is.
I also don’t quite understand what’s keeping someone from simply unscrewing the mount points and walking off with my bike rack with my bike attached to it (other than the fact that it’s probably a big hassle to carry a bike attached to a bike rack and then try to get the bike off it), but the “pain in the ass factor” is probably a significant one for most thieves so I’ll take my chances. The cable lock, like all locks Yakima, works with the standard Yakima SKS lock cores, which is handy if you’ve been sufficiently forward-thinking as to buy enough lock cores that are all keyed the same. I didn’t, so I had to use a different key for my bike racks, but there’s probably a way to buy more lock cores keyed to your existing lock cores. But it’s bike season now and I’m too busy biking to go look that up for you, so you’re on your own.
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