Yakima Highroller vs King Cobra Bike Rack Review
After the crazy weather we have had from Jan-Apr in Vancouver, the transition from spring into summer is definitely a welcome change. Don’t get me wrong, all the precipitation we had on the West Coast AKA the “Wet Coast” brought epic powder snow to the mountains of British Columbia Canada. This resulted in North America’s #1 winter resort - Whistler/Blackcomb - to have the most and the best snow in the entire world this past winter.
I love riding epic powder on my snowboard, but epic snow in the mountains usually means a whole lot of rain in the city and the lack of sunlight and dreary rain makes people sort of ancy for spring and summer where the weather is suppose to be warmer and sunnier.
One of my favourite summer sports is mountain biking and I can’t lie when I say I was getting a bit itchy to go and ride my mountain bike. I was just waiting for some spare time and some nice weather to do it. May has given me some nice days and warmer weather, and the mountain bike has definitely been out every chance I can get.
The size and shape of my bikes have changed over the years and so too have the bike racks I have used to transport my bikes from point A to point B. This year I picked up a couple Yakima Highroller Bike racks to replace my last year’s Yakima King Cobra bike racks. There is nothing wrong with the King Cobra’s as these racks were bombproof and served me extremely well over the last couple years carting my 40+ pound freeride bikes around. I just wanted to try out the new Yakima Highrollers as I heard they made a number of user friendly improvements to the racks for 2007.Â
Here are a couple shots of the Highrollers on my car. (yes I know they are on Thule roof racks!)
The Yakima clips fit both square and round bars. For the Thule square bars, you need to knock out the plastic tabs on the inside of the clip, for the round bars, just leave it as it.
 
Differences between the Yakima Highroller and the Yakima King Cobra Racks
a) Here are a couple shots of one Highroller and one King Cobra on the car at the same time.
As you can see, both models of the rack attach onto the cross bars by the same 3 plastic clips, a metal screw and plastic knobs. The single clip attaches the same for both racks, but the 2 rear clips attach slightly differently.
 
The rear of the Highroller rack is anchored by two plastic clips and tightened by hand via a small triangular dial that gets hidden under the moulded plastic cover.
The difference in the King Cobra, is the back two plastic clips are tightened down via a screw that is through a sizable plastic handle. The pictures above show that the Highrollers have the knob covered by moulded plastic cover when the rack is in the folded down position, while the King Cobra, the knobs are freely exposed when the rack is folded down.
 
From a security standpoint, the Highroller is a bit more secure as you can’t easily access the knobs under the plastic cover when the rack is folded in the down position. In order to pull the plastic cover off the Highroller, you need to raise the wheel holder to a 45 degree position to get at the plastic cover.
The King Cobra on the other hand can be easily unscrewed from the cross bars while in the down position. Anyone can come along when you don’t have a bike on the roof and unscrew the hardware very quickly and try to take your rack. Obviously when both rack are unfolded and bikes are on the racks, it is very difficult if not impossible to unscrew the rack from the cross bars as the unfolded rack is resting on top of the knobs on both racks.
Either way you both the racks have the security cable that you can use with the Yakima locking cores. Locking cores are sold separately.
b) The ratchet attachment that holds down the rear wheel is different between the Highroller and the King Cobra. The Highroller’s ratchet attachment ratchets from both sides of the rack, VS the King Cobra ratchets from only one side. The advantage of having the Highroller’s ratchet pulling from both sides is this gives equal pressure to holding the rear wheel in place and not having a twisting effect on the wheel tray as with the single ratchet on the King Cobra rack. I found this feature actually worked as the Wheel tray on the king Cobra’s would sort of twist in the direction on the ratchet when securing the rear wheel to the wheel tray.
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c) While we are talking about wheel trays, the wheel tray on the Highroller is almost twice as wide and torsionally stiffer than the wheel tray on the King Cobra.
d) I don’t have a picture of this one, but as you can see from the pictures, I have mounted my Highrollers with the rear wheel ratchet toward the front of the car. I had my King Cobra’s in this position as well. When if rained (and it does that a lot here in Vancouver) there would be a water drip that would drip on the same spot on my windshield and it would make this really annoying water mark on the windshield. Extremely annoying when it rained, and people with King Cobra’s mounted like this will know exactly what I am talking about.
You will be happy to know that I drove around for a couple days in the rain with the Highrollers on the roof, and there was no annoying dripping on the exact same spot on my windshield and more importantly no water mark!
e) Probably the biggest difference between the racks is the way the racks secure the front wheel of the bike. On the King Cobra, you use the red knob and a slot on the rack. You tighten the red knob and through compression the front wheel is held in place. The only way for the rear bar to come off the front wheel is to loosen the red knob and swing it out of the groove in the tray. All in all, this was a pretty simple procedure that required a bit of time to tighten, but after you tightened the red knob down you were pretty much good to go.
I read some posts on the internet and some people claimed that their red knobs would come loose while they drove. This never ever happened to me over the time I used these racks. It was just a bit annoying to unscrew the red knob all the way, and then flip it out of the groove, lower the rack and back the bike out of the tray to lift it off the roof.
The Highroller on the other hand has a similar looking structure that holds the front wheel into place, but how the compression effect is accomplished is a bit different. The tower bar that raises against the back of the front wheel, is the bar that provides the compression to the front wheel to hold the bike in place. You raise this tower and there a ratchet mechanism that occurs near the red button and knob. Once this tower is raised against your tire, the tower will not come back down parallel to car unless you loosen the knob or push the tray forward about half an inch and then pressing the red button to release the locking mechanism holding the tower up.
Through using the Highroller, the wheel tray where you roll the front wheel into the tray is a wider and flatter thus making the initial loading of the bike very easy, and once that bar is brought up against the back of the front wheel, the tightening of the wheel in place is very quick. You just make sure your front wheel is well aligned, give the front wheel a good pull from the front to seat the wheel in place, and then seeing as the rear part of the rack is already up against the back of the front tire, you add more compression to the front tire by simply turning the big black knob clockwise causing the tray against the back of the front tire to tighten up.
Removing the bike from the Highroller is a breeze, and faster than the King Cobra. You loosen the compression a bit by turning the black knob counter clockwise just enough so you can push the tray that is against the back of the front tire forward about 1/2 inch and then you press the red knob and pull the tray back down toward the roof of the car. The final steps to getting your bike out are to loosen off the rear wheel ratchet strap, and literally roll your bike off your roof with two hands.
In Summary
The King Cobra retails for $260 CDN plus tax and the High Roller retails for $290 CDN plus tax. Is it worth the extra $30 dollars per rack? I like both these racks. I think you can’t go wrong with either rack if you are carrying a big bike. The Highroller definitely has a few key user improvements that may justify the extra bit of cash.
You ask yourself if the following user improvements are worth the extra $30 per rack in regards to the Highroller:
a) More burly of a rack than the King Cobra. The wheel trays are wider and stiffer and they don’t bend and flex as much as the King Cobra.
b) Dual ratchet for your rear wheel to reduce the twisting on the wheel tray
c) Super fast and easy loading and unloading of your bike with the red button and dial knob. The ratchet tower and the “push button” release of this tower is very nice vs. having to un-dial that red thumb knob on the King Cobra.
d) Added security with the Highroller due to the two rear knobs that attach to the cross bars of the roof rack being hidden under the plastic moulding.
e) They look just a cool if not cooler than the King Cobra rack when on your car.
f) So far no water drop spots on the windshield when it rains from the Highroller.
