Yakima SpareTime Spare Tire Mount Bike Rack Review

Review of a Yakima SpareTime Spare Tire Mount Bike Rack

Today we are going to review the SpareTime bike carrier from Yakima, part number Y02598. This bike carrier mounts directly to the spare tire mount on the back of your SUV or van. Let us go ahead and take a closer look at our bike carrier now and show you how it installs on the back of our vehicle. To start, we want to go ahead and remove our spare tire. And we want to take our mounting plate, which we can see has multiple holes in it, it allows it to be oriented to accommodate your specific bolt pattern. You can also see that it has a tongue here, which is actually what the bike rack is going to mount to. The bike carrier comes with different length tongues as well and that is to accommodate the different thicknesses of spare tires. Once you have determined the proper combination for your vehicle, you can go ahead and set the mounting plate onto the spare tire carrier. And then just go ahead and reinstall our spare tire. 0:54

We will next take the SpareTime bike rack and go ahead and slide it onto the mounting tongue. Place the locking knob, along with the locking plate, and it into the SpareTime upright. And just thread it on to the mounting tongue. And once you have it fully tightened down, you can go ahead and take your key and it into the locking knob. Give it a half turn and now the knob itself just free spines. It cannot be released. And next we just want to go ahead and fold the arms up into position. To do that, we want to take the red handle over here on the side and go ahead and turn that counter clockwise. And what that does is it separates the locking teeth here that are holding it into place. And once they are disengaged, you can go ahead and rotate it up into position. Realign the teeth and tighten it back down. 1:41

Now we can go ahead and put our bike onto the bike rack. We just want to go ahead and release the cradles by pulling it over the locking tab here. You can see, where the bike is going to sit on top of the arms, we have some felt strips. And that is going to keep the bike from marring up. You just want to go ahead and set the bike onto the bike rack and go ahead and pull our straps down to tighten it up. You can go ahead and adjust the anti-sway arm here at the bottom to accommodate your specific cross tube. You can see that the rubber straps allow you to pull it nice and tight. And then lastly we want to go ahead and take the locking cable, that is provide, and go ahead and it through our locking loop. And just lock them together. And that is all there is to it. And that will conclude the review of the SpareTime spare tire bike carrier, part number Y02598.