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Yakima ForkLift Roof Mounted Bike Rack Review
Custom Fit Roof Racks
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Manufacturer InstructionsReview of a Yakima ForkLift Roof Mounted Bike Rack
Today we are going to show you part number Y02098 from Yakima. This is their ForkLift Bicycle Rack. The best part about the ForkLift Bicycle Rack is that it will fit directly straight to your factory roof-rack crossbars without having any adapters. It does not require tools at all to install onto the vehicle. Actually, on the front fork, it has a clamp style, which allows it to fit a variety of roof racks. The skewer itself is lockable, so you can lock your bike to the bicycle rack itself. All right, we will take a closer view of this bicycle rack and give you a better idea of how it works.
The first thing we will show you on this bicycle rack is the heavy-duty, stainless steel, lockable skewer. It is really nice. You just undo it right here in the front, and you turn this red knob right here. And that is where you snug up the skewer. You do not have to worry about holding the other side or spinning a nut you just do everything from this side here. And what is nice about this lockable skewer is, once you have it clamped down into place, take the head lever and that cinches it down. On this part of the skewer you can actually install the lock core from the SKS system - or the Same Key System, which of course are sold separately. You can take it completely off this way, and you can orient the skewer from left to right if you have to. To install the bicycle rack, you do have to have the skewer out first anyway. So then take that off, and we will show you how this mounts onto the roof rack.
You want to slide this part back, like so. Spin the knob to loosen it up. Pull that a little bit forward, and you can see how the jaws right here actually fit a wide variety of factory roof-rack bars. It also will work on square and round tube bars. Next, we will move on to the rear mount of the bicycle rack. It has nice, wide jaws that will fit a variety of factory roof racks. You unscrew the handle bolts here. You unclamp it and slide it around your factory roof-rack bars. And the last part of this bicycle rack is the wheel strap itself for the rear wheel. It is very easy to use. You simply push this button down to unlatch it and the strap comes out. Put your bike in, put this over the rim, and you can actually ratchet down tight. We have covered the basics here. Let us go ahead and install it on a typical roof-rack application and give you a better idea of how it works and how it looks.
All right, we can go ahead and put our bicycle rack on our roof rack here. Next, we will go ahead to the front of the rack and install the front clamp there first. Run this bolt through the bottom of the clamp until it comes out the bottom and then twist it 90 degrees so it cannot come out. And then push it to the front and grab one of the grooves in the front here as far up as you can. Different bars will require different grooves. Once you have it in place, just go ahead and tighten down the knob on top while at the same time applying pressure to the bolt. All right, and just get it snug enough where it just holds everything together, and then go to the back clamp. The same thing applies. You might have to move your clamp around a little bit to get it over your rear bar. Put it over the bar, bring it back up, and your bolt through the bottom of the clamp. Then turn it 90 degrees, push up on it, or pull, and then tighten down the handle on top. Again, just get enough just to hold everything together, and then take a few seconds to align, making a straight line with the car. All right, once you have it the way you want it, go ahead and start tightening down the knob. OK, on the front one, when you have it tight enough, take this part and slide it back into position. Then you can install your rack and skewer. Take the skewer and thread it through, put on the other half, and then just thread it on into place - just enough to get it started.
OK, let us go ahead and install a bike on this rack. We have got the front skewer open. We will go ahead and undo the clamp on the back and we will install our bike. Just put your rear wheel in first. Then go ahead and snug up the front skewer using this red knob. Run it up until you get it tight, then back off a couple turns, and then you can clamp it down into position. Next we will do our rear clamp. Put the strap through the rim, put it through the clamp here. Give it a couple of cranks it has a small ratchet in there. And it is locked into place. And with that, that covers our review of part number Y02098 from Yakima.
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