I was on my way home from Kirkwood last night, and my friends Thule ski/snowboard rack failed. All of our gear spilled out onto the highway. My 08 Burton Supermodel along with my bindings are toast, a nice Lib Tech and another friend's skis are also now garbage. The rack seems like it's broken, as upon testing, it will no longer stay closed. Most everyone I see, runs these same racks and I have never heard of this happening before. He's gonna try to go through his insurance, but I doubt it will cover anything except maybe the small dent in his roof.

Outside of the damage to my snowboard; any of the flying gear could have injured or killed someone by flying through their windshield, or by causing an accident. As a motorcyclist, it's hard to imagine anything much scarier than a snowboard flying right at me!

Has anyone else, ever had this happen before? I just bought a new Yakima rack last week and now I'm afraid to use it!

PS - If anyone has a nice 160+ board and or some large bindings for sale, I'm obviously in need...

 

I've used some yakima racks for a couple years now. They're fairly old and have yet to fail on me and I can't see how they would fail since they use the same kind of ratchet/tooth mechanism that say snowboard bindings have. The other confidence boost I have is that once I had 4 boards in the rack and forgot to close it. They still managed to stay in at highway speeds for 30miles until I got home. Don't know how I got that lucky.

 

Call Thule and tell them what happened. They will probably send someone to see if it was their equipments fault and then hopefully cover your damages.

 

Were they locked? How many boards were you carrying?
I use cheapo barrecrafters and I don't lock them, but I bungie cord my racks incase they ever pop up.

 

any possibility that it was user error? may sound dumb, but did you push the top bracket that latches down completely? for my rack, it'll close but you have to push it down one more time for it to completely close and latch on. also, did you guys lock the rack?

 

Ive been using a Yakima rack for 4 seasons or so with zero issues.

But let said above, try giving the company a call to see what/if anything they might/can do. The worse they can do is nothing.

 

Hey good thread

I have a Yakima rack. its "SUPPOSE" to hold 4 snowboards, 2x2.

I have a trip coming up and I want to do that. But I tested and put my board (JUSt 1) and there seemed to be an awful lot of tension. I can only imagine 2x2. I really had to push it down to close.

Now another problem. I DONT have the key to lock it, so it stays unlocked. Doesn't locking it serve as another protective measure?

Leaving it unlocked with all that tension I won't feel safe.

 

The rack broke. It was swapped for a new one today at REI. The way it broke, the lock made no difference.

 

Did they comp your gear damages?

 

I would like to know a well

 

There was someone on here, "mcowger" I think, in SF, who had this happen with a bike and got the bike replaced. Forget the rack manufacturer, but it might be good to check in and see what he did.

 

dont be afarid to use the yakima, yakimas are great. never really been too fond of thule ever since one of my high end bikes fell off the back onto the freeway......
he should try to get in contact with thule to see if they can cover some of the damage conisdering their rack broke. i have also heard of other guys thule racks breaking, never heard of a yakima breaking tho

 

shouldnt have switched it out yet... or u should go back to that rei and see if u can get them to show a thule rep. that their product was faulty and resulted in loss of your equipment.

 

Bummer. I feel for you man. I always double check my stuff to make sure I can't pull it open even if I work at it, because I'm paranoid. Not saying that could have prevented it, since it probably broke on the road or something, but just goes to show you can't always assume it's going to hold. I had a surf board come loose from some soft racks and break my antenna off on the IS300. Haven't had a problem with the Yakima racks.

 

Dude I'd ask Thule to pay for it. Shouldn't have returned em the broken one. Sorry dude, how was kirkwood?