Many of us paddle competitive kayaks and surf skis which are much longer and narrower than recreational kayaks.
As such, traditional kayak carrying racks, cradles, or foam crossbar pads aren’t sufficient since the crossbars on most vehicles are relatively close together. Crossbars a couple feet apart from one another are not good enough when toting a kayak or ski that is 21′ in length or longer.
Enter V-bars.
These carrying racks mount to the crossbars on your vehicle but then have two “V’s” much farther apart than the crossbars to cradle your boat at two different anchor points much farther apart for safer, more secure transport.
I recently compared the KayakPro EZ-Vees and the Goodboy Paddlesports vbars and hope you enjoy the video.
In short, the KayakPro EZ-Vees are adequate and quite attractive, but the Goodboy Paddlesport Vbars are superior in just about every way. Much heavier duty aluminum, heavier duty mounting hardware, wider V’s with more foam to have more contact with your boat.
Either of these would be a good choice, but if you are choosing one over the other I’d recommend you go with the Goodboy Paddlesports bars.
Click through the links below to purchase:
Goodboy Paddlsports Vbar kayak transport carriers
Kayak Car Top rack.- by KayakPro
Update March 26, 2018: I’m not sure if the folks at KayakPro saw this video or not, but in my inbox today I got the following email from them,
Dear Dave,
Thank you for buying EZ –Vees recently. We really appreciate your business.
In an effort to continually improve our products we have made a couple of upgrades to your EZ-Vee which we believe will improve their performance.
The V’s now have a custom made PVC spacer [inserted inside the square receiver] at the base of the Vees. These upgrades absorbs vibration and improves the fit onto the long bar.
The second upgrade is an improvement by additional heat shrink sleeve to the location pin that connects to and through the long bar – tests have shown the heat shrink reduces vibration.
The upgrades take just a couple of minutes to apply. We will send these out to at our cost and these will be sent to you in the next week or so.
I have attached a couple of images to show how these work.
Thank you for your support of KayakPro and of our products.
Kind Regards,
Gray
Now that is great customer service!
KayakPro is from Grayson Bourne.
Dave The Kayaker | The new home of West Side Boat Shop kayaks 
I haven’t had that problem. I suspect it has more do to with your crossbars. What type/shape of crossbars do you have?
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Have you ever had problems with the U-bolts? I find that no matter how snug I get them, the rack tilts to the side once the boat is loaded. Starting to think I should have gone with the Goodboy rack.
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So I attached 4 of the spacers on the first v and found I had to remove 2 to get it to fit comfortably and then on the second v only attached 2 and confirmed that fit was right. No instructions were included so I had to figure that out on my own. The sleeves on the pins are indeed too snug and when I removed them the first time one sleeve slid completely off the pin (even after shrinking it with a heat gun which not everyone has,), so yes, too snug. A step in the right direct but I agree, not perfect yet.
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Thanks for the review Dave!
That’s an interesting response from KayakPro. I just purchased an EZ-Vee (in April 2018), so it arrived with the spacers and the sleeve already in place. I don’t know about you, but I found that the spacers actually decreased the space within the piece that attaches the V to the bar, that the V didn’t slide in at all. I had to take the spacers out to make them fit. Same with the sleeve. The sleeve makes the pin too fat for the circumference of the hole that it’s meant to fit into.
Like you, I do find that KayakPro has great customer service, so they are on it. It’s just a bit frustrating when the pieces don’t fit!
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