RockyMounts TandemMount R4 Roof Bike Rack Review

Review of the RockyMounts TandemMount R4 Roof Bike Rack

Today were going to review the RockyMounts Tandem Mount R4 Bike rack part number RKY0512. This rack is designed to allow you to carry a tandem bike up on top of your vehicles roof rack. The rack is covered by a one year limited warranty and it weighs 15 pounds. It will support up to one tandem bike at a weight of 45 pounds. Its designed to work with either Yakama round crossbars or Thule square crossbars. Youll need a minimum crossbar spread of 24 inches and a maximum crossbar spread of 40 inches.

Now well go ahead and show you how to mount it up on our vehicle. Were using Thule square bars today, so the first thing we need to do is set up our clamps to fit the Thule square bars. They come from the factories set up for the Yakima round. All we have to do is push out this black insert piece and then our clamps will fit our square bars. Here on the back, theres a little tab and if you just push in on it, our insert will fall out and well be ready to mount it up on square bars.

Now well take the clamps and put two on the front bar, two on the rear bar and spread the mount by a couple inches. Then we can set our bike rack up on top. Well secure the bike rack first to the front. Well feed our carriage bolts down through the bike rack into the clamps and well finally use a washer and nylon lock nut on the other side to secure them. Then well slide our rear clamp into position over the two plastic clamps on our bars and repeat the same securing procedure.

You do need to make sure that your crossbars or load bars are hanging out at least 5-1/2 inches outside of the feet. If you dont have enough excess crossbar outside of your foot, or if you have a little bit taller of a vehicle, you might want to use the offset mounting brackets part number RKY0513, that will extend your rack out form the crossbars by up to 9 inches. Well take a quick measurement of our bike from the center of the front fork to the center of the rear wheel. Well then use that measurement to set-up our bike rack. The rear piece of our carrier, will telescope in and out to adjust for different bike sizes.

Once weve slid out the inner tube far enough, well go ahead and use this wing nut and clamp here to secure the two halves of the bike rack to keep them from sliding out. Now we use this push button release here at the head of the bike carrier to rotate it 90 degrees towards us. We also need to secure our handle bars. Well fit the two open loops on the straps over our handle bars. Well then feed the strap around our C post and secure with the snap buckle and then tighten it up. This is to ensure that our handle bars stay straight which will make loading and unloading much easier. Well grab our bike, pick it up and sit the front fork unto the skewer. Well then go ahead and secure the bike by the skewer. Then we can pick up the rear tire swing it up and around and onto our bike rack. The front head will then lock into place and then we can secure the rear wheel using our wheel strap. Once we have the bike loaded up on our carrier, we want to double check and make sure that the swivel head with our bikes fork is locked in its centered position and that the push pin is popped back out and thats it for our review of the RockyMounts Tandem R4 Bike rack part number RKY0512. .