I bought the Retrax XR with this rack in mind, if the t-bolts are pulling through the channel the viability of the system seems rather sketchy. I will hold off on the rack purchase, hope to see Yakima and Retrax address this.

Several others on here have nailed it. It's a design issue. The system has so much potential, but with that little bolt and 180 lbs off-road dynamic weight rating, it's just not worth the money for me right now. The Tracrac SR can hold a lot more dynamic weight, but it's bar height isn't adjustable and you don't have a choice in bar length either. :-/ No "perfect" options out there right now regarding cover + rack systems. If Yakima and Retrax can get together and figure this one out, I've got 3k waiting on them.

I have the exact same issue. Retrax provided new rails without issue. I asked Yakima how to prevent reoccurrence and was told to torque the nuts properly. I used a torque wrench on the exposed nuts but still had the issue. I asked Yakima for a recommendation for a torque wrench that will work at all 8 points and they have yet to provide any details. I am hopeful that Yakima offers an updated kit, but at this time it may be necessary to develop a custom mounting kit without their support. First time Yakima customer and very disappointed. Likely the last Yakima product I ever purchase.

Just received the Yakima kit 1 today. It came included with two sets of bolts. The surface area for the base is different. One measures at 0.71” x 0.985”, and the larger one measures at 0.765” x 1.495”. Roughly a 1/6th of an inch wider, and 1/2 an inch longer. From the video I can tell for sure that the bolts provided with that particular kit are the small bolts. Hopefully the larger bolts solve the issue. Nonetheless, I will be very careful when I tighten these down. I will use the included short wrench to limit the amount of force that can be applied.

Oh dang. Bought the xr for this build. Will hold it for now. Thank you

Thanks for the video Ian ...I’ll be installing mine tomorrow now I know what not to do

Wow! thats crazy! you are definitely correct, it would be hard to get a torque wrench in that small space, I also have the retrax xr and was thinking of getting the yakima overhaul. I might have to look at a different rack now. thanks for the video

It appears that the Yakima Kit comes with two different sized T-Bolts. The Retrax takes the larger of the two.

Just received this yesterday from Yakima in response to my email. When I receive my kit in a week I will upload a picture of the bolt. It would be good for someone that had an issue to do the same so we can put this myth to bed. Are there two bolt sizes on the market? !!! “Hello Tamer, and thank you for contacting Yakima support. This is an issue that was brought by consumers not following the instructions. Many people did not believe they were tightening the bolts enough, and so over tightened them, which led to the tracks in the Retrax getting bent. We quickly pivoted and redesigned the bolts to prevent people from bein able to overtighten them. There are no new units being sold with the old bolts. This happened over a year and a half ago. Please let us know if you need further assistance. James”

I emailed Yakima customer support and had them view your video. As of today, 8/10/2020, this is their response which says they now include new hardware to resolve this issue. "There were some early on issues with this happening, but we have corrected this and the Tonneau Kit 1 that we sell is now equipped with new hardware that is larger and wont allow the tracks to pull up. each kit includes this hardware now."

@gityerkneedahn

3 жыл бұрын

NUMB LOCK good to know, I’ll have to see if I can get the new hardware! Thanks

@numb-lock

3 жыл бұрын

Ian Fox - Crossing my fingers that the new hardware fixes this as I too have ordered a RetraxPro XR and Yakima Overhaul HD for my Tundra.

@gityerkneedahn

3 жыл бұрын

I just contacted Yakima support and had this reply, so all i can say is go cautiously with the install. James (Yakima Racks) Aug 10, 2020, 3:44 PM PDT There is not a new hardware kit, just the same one we sent you last year. James Customer Service Agent Hours M-Fri 7-4 PT

@numb-lock

3 жыл бұрын

Ian Fox - That's just bleh

@numb-lock

3 жыл бұрын

@@gityerkneedahn Updated reply from Chad at Yakima...and hoping for the best... Hi Bob, I may have spoke a little too early, The problem with the hardware pulling up on the tracks HAS been fixed and there will be new hardware included in Tonneau specific for Retrax covers, however the push of the new hardware has been slightly delayed due to the COVID 19 Pandemic. This hardware will hopefully be going out in the kits in a month or so. I hope this clarifies it and helps you feel more confident in your purchases! If you have any other questions please let me know. Thank you! Chad Consumer Service Representative

Thanks for this. I'm installing over the weekend at another site. Now I know to bring my torque wrench. For those who don't know this, you can get a smaller, light duty torque wrench at Harbor Freight for cheap. Perfect for this type of job.

@gityerkneedahn

4 жыл бұрын

Devin Gonzales let us know if you’re able to fit it in the gap

@F_T2D_Drew

3 жыл бұрын

Could try a crows foot with the torque wrench.

I would need to see a cross section of the assembly. The track pulling up tells me there is a void above the track. This void needs to be filled; perhaps with a washer or two. Perhaps a washer on the t-bolt in the t-slot to spread the load more. You can torque all the nuts. What you need is a crows foot.

The part of the T bolt that slides into rail needs to be longer to distribute weight along more surface area so it doesn’t pull up in one spot.👍🏽

@stillwaters2012

4 жыл бұрын

I have the RetraxPRO XR and THIS is how I plan on installing my Overhaul racks when I purchase them. possibly even using a piece of flat bar running between each set of T-slot bolts to help support the tonneau cover adapter and T-slots.

I’ve shared this video with Yakima and they first said you’d didn’t use the tonneau cover kit but you can see it in the video. Supposedly they’ve shared it with their design team. I’m nervous about buying one though.

@gityerkneedahn

4 жыл бұрын

Shawn Weeks definitely used the tonneau kit, in fact they had me waiting for 4momths to get it. I’m pretty sure a simple design change with the towers would completely eliminate this as an issue.

you just same me 3000k plus set up. That is not good specially in areas with high wind. I carry my ladders all the time and now I am very worry that adding the Yakima to the retrax will not work for me. I am just going to go with the Regular yakima rack that mounts to the bottom of the truck wall. And possibly add the Deck storage to my truck

On the bolts that are hard to reach you need to use a torque adapter . Or you can make one if you look up images you’ll find out what they look like.

Was that the only one with the issue? I suggest getting some washers before adding the tower base.

I wonder if the Thule rack would do the same thing?

Have you considered using a crows foot on the torque wrench? If you put it on the torque wrench at a 90° angle, you don't have to recompute torque. 10 Newton meters equals about 88 inch pounds.

Good info. That’s problematic. You don’t want to ruin your tonneau rails or compromise the strength of the attachment. I’m looking at my towers now. I haven’t installed them on my tonneau because Yakima hasn’t released the landing pads for Pace-Edwards Ultra-groove rails yet. A solution is to fill the groove under the towers where the bolts come up and bore a hole just big enough for the bolts. When you torque down the nuts there will be compression on either side of the T track and it won’t deform. You could use wood if you seal it in epoxy, or G10 or Aluminum if you can mill it. Or turn the towers upside down and use the extrusions (castings?)as a mold and pour epoxy into the groove. Obviously seal the holes and build a dam a few inches either side of them.

@gityerkneedahn

4 жыл бұрын

I think milled aluminum blocks would be the best solution, they’d have to extend down to include the thickness of the extrusion, however, looking at the shoulders (chamfer?) on the t-bolt it would take some precise forming

@maccam26

3 жыл бұрын

Roger Floyd I have the pace Edwards ultragroove also, I was led to believe on Yakima website that we would use the same landing pads / adapters as the retrax kit

@xlr8r17

3 жыл бұрын

@@gityerkneedahn I agree. Al would be the best material, however Yakima really should have designed it this way from the beginning.

I almost bought one, not too sure now.

I have a roof top tent mounted on mine, with a “home made” aluminum mounting rail system. After we returned home from a 1,200 mile trip, I noticed one of the four mounting clamps that secures the cover to the truck bed had come loose. Now I am wondering just how tough the whole system is, and I can’t seem to find much information on it.

@mcoop571

4 жыл бұрын

I secure the 1X2 aluminum square tubing with a simple 3/8-16 carriage bolt (4 ea) hardly tightened at all, just enough to compress the lock washer.

What truck did you have them on?

Thanks for the heads up on this issue. Just bought my Yakima kit and planned to run the Retrax cover. Have you contacted either company? Have they offered any resolution? I sure would have expected a 3k set up to work better then this! May have to go back to plan B and just get a decked drawer system and lose a bunch of secure storage capacity.

@gityerkneedahn

4 жыл бұрын

preppermcprepperson so yeah, I contacted both companies and I have to say their customer service was excellent, in the end retrax sent out new side rails, I’ve yet to install them and even with the damaged rails still on the rack is solid.

@Amy-cb2vt

2 жыл бұрын

@@gityerkneedahn i am having problems with mine now and it was professionally installed with a roofnest then on top. Any advice for reaching out to either company?

@gityerkneedahn

2 жыл бұрын

@@Amy-cb2vt it was retrax that eventually put me right. I’m guessing they’ll refer you to your installer tho. I’d contact via fb, twitter and email both Yakima and Retrax tho. Here’s the guy who eventually helped me: Jeremy.Schmitz@retrax.com it was a while ago now tho! Good luck!

this is a great set up, I'm looking to get the same thing. tonneau kit is not even available right now, wonder if yakima is is coming up with fix. looks the the rails from retrax could be stronger too. wonder if a design like this would work- smart-slot-kit-4 rather than individual bolts ??

@xlr8r17

3 жыл бұрын

Same boat as you. I'm standing by to see how this gets resolved. The tonneau kit drops the dyanmic offroad rating to 180 lbs, which in my opinion is not acceptable for the cost of this system. I suspect using the side rails to stiffen the system may net you another 20 lbs or so of capacity, assuming that Yakima can sort out the bolts on the kit. This is the only adjustable height system that can incorporate a tonneau cover on the market, so hopefully they sort this out. The kit is currently unavailable so I'm hoping Yakima has pulled it and doing a full redesign.

I just got the rack, like it's getting delivered today and I have the XR Pro on a Tundra. This is really disappointing. Has anyone at all had a fix for it? I am thinking wider/longer plates instead of a T-bolt only would fix the problem with spreading out the weight load a bit. Thanks for the honest review.

@jimmyanthony6557

4 жыл бұрын

Yakima just needs to narrow the channel underneath. The base of the rack needs to sit flush on the rail. Problem is the Yakima connection system wouldn’t work then. This is what happens when you try to create a product that’s flexible, but don’t execute well.

What would prevent you from using steel barstock of the correct width, then cutting off a 3" piece and tapping a hole in the center and using a threaded rod of the same size as the bolt to replace the bolt? Kind of like replacing each bolt with a two-piece bolt that would distribute the pressure of the rack across 3" (or whatever size you chose) instead of 3/4". You could even make a bar that extended the length of the rack foot.

@ronmurphy4234

3 жыл бұрын

I wounder if you could use something with a square hole and then use a carriage bolt?

@Immolate62

3 жыл бұрын

@@ronmurphy4234 you could if you had vertical travel room in the T-slot, but I don't think you do. The real problem is the surface area of the T-bolt head is too small, so when force is applied to the bolt, it deforms what little aluminum T-slot it is in contact with. If you triple or quadruple the amount of surface area for the T-bolt head, you decrease the amount of pressure by 3 or 4 times. At some point, the point of failure ceases to be the T-track and becomes the join between the T-bolt head and the T-bolt threaded rod, or the clamps that hold the slotted frame members to the bed of the truck. I think the best solution would be one length of steel, about the length of the Yakima post base, with two threaded rods welded into it at the proper interval, of course x 4. That sucker would be tearing clamps and truck bed sheet metal before it came loose.

@ronmurphy4234

3 жыл бұрын

That would work, but for the price of these things the engineering should of been better.

Did Yakima or Retrax address this issue ?

is the problem solved with retrax , or yakima? what about ls embark and pace edwards roller?

I wish I would’ve see this before I purchased the retrax.... I think that the rails are thin to hold a few hundred pounds. I wouldn’t trust it driving around 75 MPH with expensive great attached to it.

Especially for the cost of that system

This is extremely disappointing but thanks for video. I was planning to buy the Retrax One XR shortly and add the Yakima Outpost. I may have to rethink this. Any updates from either companies?

@gityerkneedahn

4 жыл бұрын

RDWAdventures yeah, retrax replaced the rails, obviously that hasn’t cured the issue, only a minor redesign of the towers is likely to do that, maybe there will be a gen2 🤷‍♂️

@garyboyle3346

4 жыл бұрын

@@gityerkneedahn Did you use the Wide Tbolts as the Kit Instructions state: "For Retrax XR™ Series and Ford Embark™ LS tonneaus use the wide t-bolts". I ordered my stuff waiting for it to show up so I don't know if there are different TBolts that come with it.

@gityerkneedahn

4 жыл бұрын

Gary Boyle I used what was supplied, I believe the t bolts were part of the tonneau kit

@garyboyle3346

3 жыл бұрын

I got the kit and I got a mini torque wrench set off amazon. It actually worked out well. The only downside is that the weight rating on the kit is 180 pounds off road. My roof top tent is 160 pounds. Which is really pushing it. It’s too bad that the rating is that little.

I made aluminum inserts to fit inside the channel the bolts pass through to help with this issue. My adapter kit came with upgraded wider t bolts but there is still the possibility of stress causing the same issue I feel. By adding the bar into this channel like I did I feel a lot better knowing the bars are supported far more. I made a video showing my addition/modification. I’m not sure if You tube will allow sharing a video in the comments or not but I can try linking to it in this comment. kzread.info/dash/bejne/nm2OkppweN3Sn7A.html Thankyou to Ian Fox for bringing this issue up. I know that Yakima tried to address the issue with their wider bolts and smaller tools to avoid the over torque but I feel they should have adjusted their extrusion process to remedy this coupled with the bigger bolt heads. There is still a lot of excess room where the bolt heads sit. In the video I show just how little contact there is still with the larger bolts. It needs more contact. Even if they provided a insert you dropped into the bar channel to support it better.

@nathanhouston8839

2 жыл бұрын

I watched your aluminum insert video. Looks like a great fix. Since you installed, have you taken back off to see if the T-slots are bending any? Thanks

@vneexceeded

2 жыл бұрын

@@nathanhouston8839 I haven’t had them off completely yet. I used them all spring and summer while we were camping for the kayaks and hauling some lumber. Towards the end of summer I had to move the back ones to accommodate the shorter kids kayaks and everything moved super easy. There was no deflection on the rails in the spot that the uprights were moved from. I feel like the inserts and wider t-bolts would allow for a higher torque spec than the manufacturer specifies but I will continue to torque them to spec with my 1/4” torque wrench. I am very happy with the inserts. No regrets at all

@garnetkodo0

2 жыл бұрын

@@vneexceeded think you can fab a set for me? i'll pay you in $$ and not internet exposure :D .

@nathanhouston8839

2 жыл бұрын

@@vneexceeded thanks so much for the great tip. I plan to have similar inserts machine. I can to to holes and slot work, but will have to find a local machine shop to mill down the aluminum for me.

So my HD bars didn’t come with instructions or mounting hardware 🤪so my rack looks like yours Yay😜

@Hungry_Tree_Ghost

4 жыл бұрын

Same. I bought mine back in April. It showed up at the end of May. Opened the box to see there was no mounting hardware. I got in contact with Yakima online support, and had to wait till just yesterday (June 30th) for it to come in. That's insane, and I've been searching everywhere for others that have had the same problem. One person even made BBB complaint about them. They seem to lack quality control.

It looks like the towers need to be slid into the tracks.

@stillwaters2012

4 жыл бұрын

@Default Name agreed. some flat bar stock and holes that align with the Yakima "tonneau adapter" should solidify the entire system..

Crowsfoot.

I had installed retrax, just purchased yakima overhaul now i dont know what to do, I dont want to have this issue

@AldapesExpress

3 жыл бұрын

Did you try it? How does it look like now?

I see at a Retrax failure more rhan Yakima

@philosophic6208

Жыл бұрын

Perhaps skip the Yak and buy a Leitner if you want to use the tonneau rails? I've had my doubts for a long time about these aluminum tonneau rails holding up long term and I don't trust them for off road at all. In the end I've gone with a custom Adarac Alum series stake pocket mount milled through the standard Retrax rails. Now the mount clamps through the tonneau rather than relying on the tonneau clamps to manage all the cantilevered weight of the loaded rack.

Come on man, you over tightened the nuts. 🤦🏿