Today on this 2004 Ford Explorer with factory raised side rails we are going to be installing a Yakima Railgrab roof rack system. Once you have your crossbar assemblies all put together you are ready to install them up on your roof. Before we start tightening down our front crossbar assembly we need to make sure that the crossbar is running perpendicular to our factory side rails. We are going to measure from a fixed point at the front of our side rail to the edge of the railgrab tower to ensure that the crossbar is perpendicular. We also need to make sure that the crossbar is overhanging evenly from both the left side to the right side. We will visually check the crossbar from the front of the vehicle to check our overhang. Once we have our positioning set we will take the included allen wrench and start to tighten the system down. The black bolt will tighten up our Railgrab tower to our side rail. The silver allen head bolt towards the top of our Railgrab tower will clamp the tower onto the crossbar and secure the crossbar. Once we have the front crossbar assembly tightened down we can go ahead and place the rear and get it posititoned correctly. 1:00
Next we need to ensure that the rear crossbar is running parallel with our front crossbar. To check this we are going to measure our crossbar spread from the center of the front crossbar to the center of the rear crossbar. Next we will take the included allen key and repeat the same tightening procedure that we used for the front. Yakima also provides the option to install their SKS lock core system. After you remove these plastic knockouts you can install the SKS lock cores. And that does it for the Yakima Railgrab roof rack system on our 2004 Ford Explorer with factory raised side rails.
