Today we are going to show you the Yakima BowDown, folding J-style kayak carrier, part number Y04042. Bow down is a roof mounted, folding, J-style carrier that is designed to hold one kayak. The bow down uses a clamp system to attach to your cross bars. It will fit both Yakima round cross bars, square load bars, as well as most OEM style cross bars available. :24
To fold the bow down flat, loosen the red knob. Once loosened, the carrier can be folded flat and tightened down the red knob to secure it. On the base, are hard plastic loading ramps. You can rest your kayak against them and push it up, and it will into the cradle, making loading and unloading much easier. Like most Yakima products, there is a bottle opener on the end of the cradle for the after trip beverage. :53
At the top of the cradle is a loop for our load straps. Just feed the strap through and pull it over the top. We will repeat the same procedure for the strap on the other carrier. With our straps in place, we will set them out of the way, and load our kayak onto the carrier. With the kayak up on the carrier, we will pull the straps over the top and secure it to the rack. We will feed the strap underneath our crossbar and the rack, come back out, and feed the loose end of the strap through our cam buckle. We will take out the slate and pull down on our loose end to strap the kayak down tight. Then take our excess and wrap it up and out of the way. We will repeat the same procedure on the strap on the rear of the kayak. 1:44
Finally we are going to take our bow and stern tie down straps and secure the bow and stern of our kayak to the vehicle for extra security. We will take the open end of our long strap and feed it through the cam buckle. We will take the loop end of our stern tie down strap and feed our metal hook through it. We will use the sleeve on the strap to protect our vehicles paint. We will take our hook and put it in the safety chain loop and tighten down the strap. We will tie our excess off down by the safety loop. We will take our cam buckle lead and feed it through the handle again. On the front of the car, underneath the bumper we will need to find a place for our hook. Again, we will use our sleeve to protect the finish on our vehicle and feed the strap up. We will take the loose end of our strap, feed it through our cam buckle. Now that both our bow and stern are secured, we are ready to hit the road. 2:43
While we are on the road we are going to check to see how stable the carrier holds our kayak on the roof. That does it for the BowDown, J-style kayak carrier from Yakima, part number Y04042.
