Yakima FullBack 3 Bike Rack Review
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Review of the Yakima FullBack 3 Bike Rack
Today we're going to be taking a look at the Yakima FullBack 3 Bike Rack, part number Y02633. The Yakima FullBack is a great trunk-mounted bike rack that can carry up to three bikes and is very easy to install. It can carry a wide variety of bikes ranging from your mountain bikes to your road bikes to your kids bikes. It has a wide variety of safety features, ranging from our stabilization strap, which wraps around all three bikes once they're installed, to the wheel strap for our bike closest to the vehicle itself. Also, the integrated cable lock, which will secure your bikes to the rack. The cradles themselves are stationary and have this SuperCush material on the top of it to help pad your bike once you install it. It also has these easy to use ZipStrips for easy loading and unloading.
Simply just push them down, and they ratchet into place. To take them out, you just push the tabs on either side, and they lift right out. They also anti-sway cradles, like you see here. That's to keep the bike from moving too far back and forth and cause bike to bike contact while you're driving as well. These do fold up, out of the way. That does make loading/unloading 10 times easier.
Once the bikes are taken off and you're ready to park in your garage or just park in general, you can fold these arms down to give you a little bit more clearance in the rear. You can also fold these down once you're completely finished with it. Just fold it up for storage and put it in your vehicle or in your garage. You just go to these two gray dials here, pull up, and these fold down, which makes this very easy to operate and use. How this back rack attaches to your hatch or your trunk, you're going to have four cam-buckle straps with rubber-coated hooks marked top and bottom. You'll have to convert these hooks into anchor points for certain vehicles with glass hatches or other requirements.
The bike rack also has padding where it would make contact with the base of your trunk or hatch, as well as the top here where it makes contact with our windshield. You also want to make sure that you check your instructions because you may or may not be able to use your rear windshield wiper when this is installed. You can see here it folds up to a convenient carrying size so you can store it in your vehicle or at home, and it's ready for the next time. First we'll take it on to our slalom course. This will show you the side-to-side action, such as making turns or evasive maneuvers. Now we're at the alternating speed bumps. This will show you how it looks driving on uneven pavement or potholes.
Finally, we're at the solid speed bumps, which simulates going into your driveway or parking lots. When it comes out of the box, you're going to see it basically in this folded position. You'll see the three dials, two light gray and one black in the center. You push up on those like so to release them. There are numbers on the back side, and we'll point those out in a second. You want to refer to your instructions to know which setting this is for your particular vehicle. We'll start with the center one. You just push up like so, and it folds out. It looks like we actually got right where we need to, but just to show you how that's going to look, here's that marking. One, two, three, four, five. All right, now we're ready to set this on our vehicle. You do have the option of using this safety strap that comes included. It would wrap through the top like so, then you would take this portion and feed it through the top of the hatch or trunk of your vehicle. That would serve as an additional safety feature for this bike rack. Next we'll take our rubber coated hooks that are marked top, remove the rubber band around them, and insert it to the top here. I want to make sure that I'm not blocking off this rear light. Then, we'll use our cam-buckle strap, and then we'll install our other hook. Now we'll go to the base and start making our connections there as well. Come to the bottom portion of our hatch, hook them through, and we'll do this on the other side as well. We'll also tighten these up with the cam-buckle straps here. With everything cinched down, now we'll take our excess and wind it up and we have these rubber fasteners here to hold that out of the way. We'll repeat this for our other connection points. Now that we have our bike rack secured to our vehicle, our next step is to fold out the arms to get ready to load up our bikes. To fold out the arms, it's the same process as you would for the center dial here to actually fold out the bike rack. We'll push up and fold them out. These don't have any dials in particular, you just set it to whatever height is best suited for our vehicle. Next to get our bike rack ready to receive the bikes, we'll go ahead and remove the ZipStrips up at the top. To do that, there's tabs on either side that you push in at the same time to release them. It's very easy. Next, we'll start loading up our bikes. In some cases, you may need to use an adapter bar for certain alternative frame bikes. Yakima does sell an adapter bar online, which is sold separately. Take our strap, feed it through, bring our anti-sway cradle down, strap that in as well, and then we'll go to the other side and put our final strap in. We'll repeat this for our remaining bikes. Next, we'll install our stabilization strap. You just want wrap it around the frames of the bikes, as well as the bike rack itself. This is going to keep the bikes together and from moving around too much while you drive as well. Then our final step is we're going to take our integrated cable lock, wrap it around our front bike, attach it back to itself, and now it's secured and you're ready to hit the road. Now that we've shown you one way to install it on a vehicle, we'll show you the second way, which requires you to turn these hooks into anchor points for certain vehicles with glass hatches or other requirements. We'll first remove these straps from our cam-buckle all the way. Next, you notice at the top of the hook here, you'll see this extra slot. We'll take the other end of our strap, and we'll feed it through that, and pull it all the way through converting it into an anchor. We'll repeat this process for the other strap. Our next step is to pop open the trunk, we'll lift it up, then we'll go to the top where the trunk meets up with the top of the vehicle. We'll take our one end of our strap, we'll guide it through that spacing there, we'll pull it through, not all the way, just enough to have our strap showing out like so. We'll repeat this for the other strap. Next, we can close our trunk hatch. As we pull the straps out completely, we want to make sure that these hooks do not make contact with any glass, although it doesn't seem like it's going to be a problem here. Now we'll pull our strap up through the crease between the trunk and the car. You can see they're resting nicely on the roof of the vehicle. Next, we can install the rest of our bike rack, following all the instructions and fit guide specifications. Bring our cam-buckle up, and reinstall our straps. Now we can cinch up all our access and start loading up our bikes. There you have it for the Yakima FullBack 3 Bike Rack, part number Y02633.
Peter G.
1/21/2022
Does this rack fit on a 2020 Toyota Highlander and does it come in a 2 bike model?
Les D.
1/21/2022
@PeterG yes the Yakima # Y02633 "Full Back 3" would be an excellent choice on the product page there are several customer pictures of this rack on a similar SUV. We also have # Y02634 as a 2-bike rack. I like that it has an integrated cable locking system. Carries 2 bikes at 35 pounds each. Limited Lifetime Warranty.
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Peter G.
1/22/2022
thanks Les!