As a cyclist, the search for newer and better gear is constant — there's always something else out there. Premes, Picks, Promos will highlight both the next big thing and the sleeper deal.
As much as we'd like to, we can't really ride our bikes everywhere. Sometimes, you just have to put it on the rack and drive. Case in point: vacation.
The Saris Bones 3 has been our go-to rack for a few years now. But it only works on my car, not my wife's car. And that's the car that drew vacation duties. Because there's an external spare tire, we needed something different. I went with the Yakima Sparetime for two reasons: One, it's well-built and secure. Two, it's what we had in the store.
Installation was reasonably easy: Remove the spare, put the Yakima mounting plate behind it, reinstall the spare. After that, you install the rack assembly to the mounting plate and tongue, tighten it down and go to town. The rack is, essentially, bolted onto the car, with the spare itself providing stability.
Nice design, huh? It was pretty straightforward from my
perspective. Unfortunately, the picture on the right is the product of that design. That's the seat tube of a Madone, scratched down to the carbon. (Also, that's our garbage can to the right. Just ignore that part.)
The bike itself is fine. There are no scratches in the carbon. But that's a lot of paint. And this, believe it or not, came after having padding on the tube.
When I showed the picture to our Yakima rep, he seemed surprised — he hadn't seen that before. He's going to check with Yakima's tech guys to see what the deal is.
In the meantime, I have a few theories. First off, the brace that holds the seat tube is too hard and too narrow. It's cup-shaped, but the only thing it will fit is old-school steel tubing. The seat tubes on both my Madone and my wife's bike are much larger ... like most every other bike out there.
I mentioned that we used padding on the seat tubes; that was mostly because that brace was so hard it seemed like it would saw a hole in the tube if it were left uncovered. It made two distinct contact points on each side of the seat tube. Those points are marked by gouges on my wife's bike.
If you compare that brace design to that of, say, Yakima's Doubledown series, you'll find a big difference. The Doubledown braces are wider and softer. No way they'd yank off that much — if any — paint.
My other theory could well be a user-error thing. I'm willing to accept that, but only partially. The tendency when you put your bike on a rack is to cinch that thing down with the rubber straps. You don't want your bike swaying in the breeze back there, right?
The rack's design (the narrowness of the cup) contributed to the need to pad it. That tendency to lock down your bikes may have led to too much pressure on the seat-tube cup and padding, which basically sanded down the paint when the bike did move on the rack.
The end result, regardless of blame, is a scratched-up bike. Until I get a good recommendation from Yakima, even if that recommendation is "you're not very smart," the Sparetime gets a "do not buy this" tag.
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In addition to being GamJams Tech Editor, Bryan Redemske manages the Trek Bicycle Store of
Omaha, is a professional writer and a Cat 3 racer. He drinks a
lot of
coffee.
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