Yakima Mighty Joe Car Rack

Roger Zoul said:

Anyone have any experience with these for mounting a bike to the back of your car?

Are the easy to use? Easy to put on, take off? What about their potential to scratch a car - high
or low? Do they hold the bike well? Is it possible to lock the bike on the rack?

Any opinions / notions welcome. Thanks.

I bought the Mighty Joe a month ago. Use it on a 96 Pontiac Bonneville. I had/have all the same
concerns that you are asking so was originally looking at installing a trailer hitch on the car
(only) for big rack purposes. But, I got over that and bought the Yakima.

The Might Joe has rubber-covered latches - definitely a good thing (and necessary to keep from
wacking my rear spoiler). It takes me five minutes to put it on the car, just because I want to be
careful and don't want to scratch the car. When I tighten the straps before racking the bike, I can
see the top of the lid indent slightly from the pressure of the top mounting pads, but once I rack
the bike, all the weight transfers to the lower set of pads that (in my case) are resting on the
bumper. Re-tightening the straps makes everything very secure. The mounting points for the bike work
well and the rubber straps that hold the bike to the rack work well. I don't know if, over time, the
top straps that hook to the top forward edge of the trunk lid will bend the lid edge up. I don't
think it will, but that's probably the only place that bending might happen.

To further secure the bike (to keep it from moving (swinging) front & back, I use a small nylon
strap to hold one pedal clip to the Yakima frame. I use another strap to hold the front wheel to the
bike frame (to keep that from rotating).

Although the "grabbers" that hook to the edges of the trunk lid are rubber-coated, I also use
squares of thin rubber to further protect the lid.

To lock the bike and rack to the car (when not driving), I use a cable type lock. I feed it through
the frame (just behind the bumper), then fish is through the bike and rack. That hopefully prevents
theft of the bike or rack. If you want to keep the rack mounted on the car while out biking, you can
loop the cable through the frame so that it is "locked" to the car.

The only downside of this type of rack is that you can't open the trunk easily (talking about when
no bikes are on the rack). Since the rack bottom is resting on the bumper, opening the trunk lid
makes the setup loose.

Check with the dealer BEFORE you buy one about how this rack mounts specifically to your car. Some
vehicles (mine included) require a $15 option that allows you to properly mount the rack. None of
the websites (including Yakima) tell you about this ahead of time -- even when you plunk in your
make & model into their compatibility chart. It meant a second trip back to the dealer to buy the
alternate mounting straps.

The other rack that I was considering was a Thule (much cheaper at $70, but only a 2 biker), but the
Yakmima seemed like a much better animal. (And I didn't like the Thule website.)

Would I buy it again? - yes

Ed