Troy Szczurkowski: Yakima Highroller racks to Jayco Dove Outback

I had a problem of how to carry the fatbikes when we take the camper away for multi-day trips. The Pugsley and the Witjira both have 4" tyres and wont fit in the wheel tray of regular roof mounted racks. The front axle width is 135mm (as opposed to 100mm for most mtbs and road bikes) so wouldn't fit many roof mounted rack options out there.

Basically the Yakima Highroller fitted the requirements perfectly, however I had a bit of basic fabrication to do to adapt them for the roofbars of the camper. The roofbars on the camper are the genuine Jayco aero bars to suit the Dove Outback. The roofbars have a load limit of 100kg, but the load must be removed before winding up the camper roof.

The Highroller comes shipped with a fitting kit to suit 25mm round crossbars, the issue was the Jayco crossbars are 25mm wide and 50mm high. There are other fitting kits available to suit different crossbar profiles, but none existed for this crossbar profile. Some out-of-the-box thinking was required.

Here you can see how the front wheel is captured in the hoops - this means I can take my fatbike or my aero road bike with no clamping forces or contact on the frame.

To enable a firm fit, I deflate the tyres so they can fit within the confines of the hoop. To give an idea of scale, the rim width is 80mm. The front hoop is adjustable and has graduations to suit different wheel heights. The diameter of a 4" fatbike tyre/wheel is approx the same of a 29er, so the 29er setting is used on the front hoop.

Below is the rear clamp on the front tyre.

Here on the back wheel, you can see the tyre fits into the wheel tray quite well. The ratchet strap is long enough to clamp the wheel, and the superior ratcheting action dials in the tension perfectly. Tyre has about 4psi in it - hasn't dropped all that much, when you consider beach operating pressure is around 10psi. Re-inflation is quick with onboard air in the truck.

So now you can see the profile of the crossbar and the non-standard, home made fitting kit.

The black knobs on the bottom of the bolts have a captive nut in them - these knobs (as well as the silver spring washers under the knobs) come in the standard 25mm crossbar kit with the Highroller.
The galvanised bracket is 1 half of a tv antenna clamp (to suit 25mm tube) with some slit pieces of reinforced rubber fuel hose (on the bracket) and garden hose (on the top of the crossbar) to protect the crossbar from damage.
The bolts are from the antenna clamp kit, and have an anti-turn head to lock into the 'T' channel in the Highroller base.
The captive nut in the black knob is loctited (#243) to the bolt.

This is the rear mount pictured:

This is the front mount pictured with the plastic cowl taken off.

The rack baseplate is steel. I drilled another hole in the baseplate and elongated the existing square hole on the right, for the 8mm galvanised u-bolt. Holes were sealed with zinc paint.