Thule Thule Yepp Rear Rack

First, the rack is very strong and well made. It gives me confidence that it will hold my child and seat on.
I have a trek x-caliber 7. Finding a rack for a child seat is near impossible. This is one of the only racks out there besides Giant, Toppeak to name a few that explicitly states that it can handle a child seat. When i got the rack I was very happy with the finish and construction. Its a very good rack.

Now the bad, as others have stated, it doesn’t come with all the hardware required. I am a very handy/experienced person with all the right tools so install was not too hard for me just took some time. To get it to work on my Trek x-caliber 7 mountain bike, I had to buy 2 more m5 allen head bolts for main mounting. I recommend stainless bolts. I used blue locktite on the all the bolts torqued to 8Nm.

Next, this is the trickiest part, my bike has a 17.5″ frame so I had to use the longest struts with the rack. The issue is the longest struts are welded together for use in a slightly different application for mounting. So I used a Dremel to cut all the welds to separate the longer struts. Then i used an angle grinder to flush down the weld points, then painted the struts in those grinded areas back to black so they wont rust.

Next I had to put the struts in a vice to bend them to the proper angle and then twist them slightly with vice grips so they would lay flat on the bike frame standoffs and the rack bracket. Finally I was able to level the rack and bolt everything together!

Seems to be working great so far and is very sturdy!

I would give 5 stars if they supplied the longest struts not in a welded config so I didnt have to modify, and if they included lower mounting bolts. The instructions do not show how to attached the lower part and I hope they did not expect this to be an axle mounted rack for the 77lbs capacity.

I read other reviews saying that parts were not included with their purchase. I was hoping those were outliers. My rack came today and seems very sturdy, but there were NO parts included as a part of the package and there were no installation instructions. From what I can tell from the Thule website, this should have come with a set of installation bars, 4-6 bolts, 4-6 washers and nuts. I could go and get bolts form the hardware store, but without the installation bars, I am not able to use this rack. Extremely frustrating.

I read all the bad reviews everywhere but didn’t have an option as I already have a Yepp bike seat. Can’t believe I’m still missing a part that after so many comments here, on Amazon and plenty other retailers. I love Thule’s products, so disappointed to have to chase them after parts.

Although if you were looking for this rack to come complete with all the screws, nuts, & hardware it lacks all hardware neccesary, but the reason why I am providing a very positive review is because this rack is built tough, I mean I was looking for a bike rack to support my two 20 A-H battery packs, & where my generic aluminium bike rack broke into pieces trying to support the weight this thick steel rack can not only do that, but it can also carry a good load of groceries; in addition, to the batteries. I am very impressed although I had to use my own hardware to set it up to my recumbent.

My star review is for the vendor; product would be 5 starts. I rarely write reviews, but I am irritated enough (and this cost enough) that I’m taking the time to hopefully save someone else the headache I had. I did not heed the other reviews and figured missing hardware was a random thing. However, mine was missing more than half of the pieces; my guess is that this vendor accepts incomplete returns and sends them back out to other buyers without all the parts. Amazon’s product help link directed me to call Thule. The customer rep there informed me that the Amazon seller is a third party (not Thule itself), so my only option to try to get replacement parts was to file a warranty claim with no guarantees of replacement. It wasn’t quite obvious at first exactly how many pieces were missing because the manual doesn’t diagram all the pieces that should be included. But after much confusion and searching the web, I found out that you should get the rack, three different lengths of support braces (5 pieces total), an adapter piece for the longest support brace, two short screws, one very long screw, three nuts, and several washers. I ended up buying the same rack from another online retailer and got the complete package. In the photo, on the top is what I got from my Amazon purchase and on the bottom is what you should get with the complete product. Just buy from another retailer and don’t take your chances here. Total price with shipping from the other retailer was actually $10 less than I paid with Amazon and free shipping. As for the product itself, the rack is really solid and very nice, albeit a bit heavy and works as advertised with the Thule Yepp Nexxt child seat.

This was one of my worst purchases at Amazon. This rack is extremely heavy and terribly packed. As other reviewers have pointed out, it’s missing a bunch of stuff. It came with one screw, three nuts and 5 washers.

You would think that a Thule product that is shipped and sold by Amazon would have some sort of quality control. So disappointed! I’ll return the rack and probably just sell the seat I bought. What’s the point of buying a super light seat when the rack weights tons.