I bought my dry dock last spring (used). The seller forgot (or lost) the hitch pin and had it shipped direct form Yakima. It was the wrong size! However, resourceful as I am, I drove to the nearest hardware store and bought a 4" long bolt (was it 5/8"?), nut and a lot of washers, just in case.
Well, the thread was too short so the washers came in handy. I bolted it up. I have one set kayak saddles on the dry dock, and a foam block that sits on the cab. Slapped my ok prowler (15')on, strapped it down, loaded up a couple of wilderness rippers in the truck bed, and headed for the beach. It provided a very stable ride, even at high speeds (80 mph) with high winds (20 to 30 mph). I did get my bolt modified for full thread. Works perfect now.
My wife got tired of driving around with a homemade canoe rack on the back of our 1993 Ford F-150, so she recently agreed to my purchase of a Yakima Dry Dock. I used it for the first time this weekend, and it worked just as it should.
Some reviewers complain of instability, but I did not experience that. The Dry Dock resists almost all lateral motion. If I push forward on it when my boat is off, it will rock up slightly, but it won’t rock when my boat is cinched down on both the Dry Dock and the cab rack. I did some driving at 70+ MPH on the interstate and some driving on narrow winding roads in the Texas Hill Country. I had no problems with the rack.
The rear bumper on my truck is an aftermarket affair, apparently constructed out of a steel tube. There is no lip for me to hook the straps on as shown in the instructions. But I did find a place to hook them on the sides of the bumper. Accordingly, instead of putting the straps inside the “Y” as the instructions said, I placed them outside the “Y” and crossed them into an “X,” hooking the straps to the bumper sides. It worked fine.
Some have complained that the rack sticks so far beyond the back of the truck that you cannot use it for small boats. That could be, but I have a 17 foot Grumman aluminum canoe, so it wasn’t a problem for me. If as I hope I get a different, shorter boat, I will move the cab rack from the front of the cab to the rear. That should help except for very short boats. Very short boats can probably be tied in the truck bed with no rack at all.
I am glad I bought the rack, and I see no reason why anyone else needing the rack would not be so as well.