Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This product is well priced and very sturdy. But the assembly of it was much more difficult than it should have been. The instructions, as other reviews have noted, are non-existent (I went through all the comments to see if anyone had ever written down instructions, and since no one had, I will try to remedy this later in the review) If you just want some instructions then scroll down a bit. I am used to assembling different items and I'm quite handy, so the problem was not on my side. To begin, I think it is really a poor business practice to sell this item on Amazon without including a sheet of decent instructions. The seller is evidently someone who gets these wholesale from China and then retails them out. The seller really should have assembled a set himself and then written up some decent instructions based on his experience. What you get in the box is a rather poorly packed assemblage of parts (tubes, nuts, bolt, etc.) which frankly look a little dirty ... as if they are used already, but I think it likely that this is the way they came from China. That said, the finished product looks good and is certainly sturdy enough for the job. Now for the assembly. The racks come with a one page sheet listing the parts included and a rather rough diagram of how they are to go together. I will refer to the numbered items in the diagram when giving the instructions. The kit comes with a little flat wrench, but frankly you will need to have a decent ratchet set, and one including some deep or long sockets to use when tightening the nuts for the two longer bolts used for attaching the rack to your car). Also, you might need to have some kind of lubricant on hand to help some of these pieces to fit together more easily, a metal file, and you might have to (as I did) get some extra bolts that have a screw slot on the head instead of the round headed bolts that come with the unit. Now, it may be that my unit just did not fit together as well as others might have, but if yours was like mine you will need to make some of the same adjustments I had to make. The problem is that some of the pieces only fit together with some serious shimmying and effort, while others really did not fit at all. So, now I will give the steps for assembling these racks, with any tips for a particularly difficult step. You might want to read through all this first while looking at the different pieces before you begin. 1. The rack has two major tubular pieces, one longer than the other. Take the shorter curved tube (part#2) and insert it into the square rubber piece (part#3). NOTE: Be sure the part of the rubber piece with the 9-square pattern is facing up. You might have to shimmy it in, it's a tight fit. 2. Next take the long tube (part#1) and insert it into the rubber part from the other side. Push hard (and wiggle and shimmy the tube) until the two tubes fit together inside the rubber piece. NOTE: part#1 and part#2 have male/female endings so one tube slides into the other. You might need to lube the tube ends (inside the female and outside the male, AND squeeze one of the tube ends to make the ends line up so they fit together.... a bit of a hassle but the fit in the end). Also make sure the three holes in the joined tubes match up right in order to slip the bolts through. 3. Before you begin to put the bolts in place, you have to fit the large metal plate (part#4) snugly against the bottom of the rubber part#3. NOTE: the metal plate has an indentation on the bottom and a raised ridge on the top. Make sure the plate has the top ridged surface fitting into the bottom of the rubber part#3. 4. OK, now for the bolting. Above I said "slip" the bolts through, but you might actually have to "battle" them through, since some of the holes just don't match up for easy insertion. I had to do some filing on the holes. Also, look at the bottom of the bolt heads. They have a square neck, which are intended to fit into the square holes in the metal plate (look at part#4). If this worked as designed, all would have been easier. In my case, several of the bolts would not seat properly as they were supposed to, so that when it came tome to tighten down the nut on the bottom, the bolt's head would not "grab" into the square hole of plate #4 and the bolt would simply turn without tightening. The bolt heads are round (yes they look good, but...) and so there was no other way to keep the bolt from turning while I was trying to ratchet the nut from the bottom. This is why you might have to go to a hardware store and get equivalent sized bolts that do have a screw head so that you can keep the bolt still with a screw driver on one end while you ratchet the nut tight with the other. The shorter of the bolts (part#9) go into the 4 corner holes. Later after these are all bolted in place you can insert the two longer bolts (part#8) into the middle holes. 5. Once the bolts are all inserted and the nuts tightened down (If your experience is like mine, you'll really enjoy this part) you are practically done with that part of the assembly that only has to be done once. The next step is just inserting the bottom metal plate that is used to secure the racks to your roof rack. You slide the narrow metal bracket (part#5) with the concave side facing the bottom of the larger metal plate and attach the wing-nuts (part#7), just to keep all the parts together. When you want to set the kayak rack on your car all you have to do is disassemble and reassemble this one part. I hope this helps.