Shower Cubicle for Front Runner Slimline II Platform Racks

Video Transcript for Shower Cubicle for Front Runner Slimline II Platform Racks: The Breakdown

Hey, everyone, it's Evangeline here at etrailer. And today, we have the Front Runner shower curtain or privacy cubicle that is designed for your Front Runner roof racks. We're gonna take a look at how it installs or how you set it up as well as why you might consider this for your adventures. So why would you be interested in getting a shower cubicle Well, if you have a Front Runner Slimline II roof rack, like what we have here, then you're probably decking it out with everything you need for your adventures. And hopefully, part of your adventures is you're still taking showers. Well, if you need the privacy to do so, then this is something that's actually very quick and easy to set up.

And if you pair it with something like the shower bag that can be heated by the sun or something like the road shower, or if you have water tanks on top of your rack, then that experience could actually be a lot more enjoyable than it usually is when you're camping out in the wilderness. If you need to change real quick or maybe just use the bathroom, and you have a little porta-potty, then this is a good spot to put it to. It's an extremely windy day here at etrailer. So we opened up our garage door real quick to demonstrate just that wind tunnel coming through. And you can see that this is made of a ripstop, almost vinyl material.

And what that means is it's gonna be UV-resistant. So even if you have it outside, the material itself won't degrade as quickly compared to other types of fabric. It has a little heft to it, and it's even if the wind moves around on our fabric, there's a lot of extra fabric that I'm not concerned about it accidentally showing whatever's inside. (curtain crinkling) So this shower curtain is going to be 67 inches long and depending on your vehicle and where your rack is mounted, your experience with this cubicle can be different. Now, I, obviously, can hide very easily behind the curtain, but what if you're a taller person like Jake (curtain rustling) Jake, do you feel like this cubicle gives you privacy Yeah, absolutely.

As long as I had something to cover the the windows here, I think it would be perfect. Awesome. I do understand what Jake means about having the window being right where the shower cubicle is, be making you a little bit uncomfortable. I mean, I do it for a reason because this gives me easy access inside my car if I need to grab my toiletries. I like to hang my towel off of the door and then that creates more privacy.

But you can also get things like the shower caddy, which goes across this. This is a Front Runner item that pairs perfectly well with a shower cubicle, or you can move your shower cubicle pretty much anywhere you want on your Front Runner rack. Now, by anywhere, I mean, anywhere along the sides of your rack. So this is designed for the Front Runner Slimline II-based rack. And that's because this secures to the crossbar slats as well as the side rails of your rack. So if you wanted further up towards the front or further towards the back, that is absolutely something you can do. Now, you are limited though to the distance of six slats' distance. So with this being a longer roof rack, we're fine with adjusting it forward or backward. These are what your brackets look like. So you have a rubber seal on the first hole, and then you have another hole, and then you have a stopper. So all this works together for a very strong, very sturdy fit. When you need to remove your curtain because you're ready to drive off in a way, you first remove the curtain material and then you can remove these poles. Now, if you're fully filling up your rack, then you know that the measurements of the brackets can be very important. Look at what we did here. We have it perfectly flushed against our RotopaX canister. So for that measurement, it's going to be 2 1/4 inches. That's measured from your rail to the end of the bracket. So it doesn't include this part that goes over the rail. That will help you create a grid-like system within your rack to fully maximize your Front Runner rack. Pouring water onto our fabric. You can see how the water's just pulling up, and it's not saturating the ripstop fabric, which is great, especially if this is used as a shower curtain. So true to Front Runner's style of accessories, this is really designed to be yours and to work around how you want to live out your adventures. So maybe you're finished with your shower, you can move this curtain off to the side and use the rods as a clothesline. You can move this forward or backwards to use it as either a privacy or a shower cubicle. You can fold this all up to fit inside this included carry bag. Now, with this, it's gonna be a tight fit, so you can't really add anything else to this bag. So with that in mind, I usually store this inside the vehicle 'cause it fits very nicely along the wall or the back of the car. Technically, you might be able to strap it onto your roof, but since this carry bag has just a cinch strap on top, then you can still have water or debris going through the top, which is why I would prefer it inside. Now, I talked about how this all packs up and can be put into the carry bag. Let's take a look at that so that we can unpack it and show you how to install this on your rack. So here we have everything laid out. And note for later, when you pack your curtain away, I like to put the rod there in the middle. That way, it packs up a lot tighter than on its own. We have our brackets, we have our hardware. The only thing I bring to the table is a five-millimeter wrench and the Moki door step so I can get that extra height up onto the rack. So let's get started with installing our bolts to our rack. This is going to take up six slats worth of space on your rack. So start planning things out right now. Do you want it over your door here Do you want it in the front, in the back by your hatch So let's do for the door. We're gonna do one, two, three, four, five, six, that's perfect. Now that we know where it is and if we have space, let's get it installed. If you have other accessories on your roof, you just need to get access to slat number one and slat number six. So we're gonna move this canister out of the way. We're gonna find that that machine opening, and we're gonna drop our thin nut in and through slat one and slat six. (nut clinking) For your nyloc nuts, these can be slid through your corner bracket. You don't have to take that bracket off, but if you find it makes it easier for it to slide through, you can. Now, since we have a stopper in the middle, I'm gonna slide through on this side and then slide the other one on the other corner. Here's what that obstacle in the middle looks like. We're gonna slide our nut over to where the slat one and slat six thin nuts are. (nut grating) Sliding the thin nut over, we're gonna use it to secure our brackets. So this is the first bracket that's gonna fit over the nyloc nut and then the thin nut. To try to line up those holes, I use my five-millimeter wrench to help me out with lining things up. That looks good. And then we're going to get our second bracket. This is gonna fit over. Notice how our rubber gasket here is facing out That will also need to be lined up with the holes. Double-check, double-check. And finally, secure them with your two bolts. So there's gonna be a short bolt and a long bolt. The longer bolt will go over to where the rubber gasket is, and it's gonna have a flat washer. The shorter bolt will be in the middle, and it's gonna have what's called a SCHNORR washer. But see how it has lines on it That's gonna make it look different from your flat washer. So long bolt goes into your side rail, short bolt goes into your crossbar slats. (bolt clinking) And both are secured with your five-millimeter Allen wrench. Now put these poles through the brackets, and this is gonna take a little bit of effort to get through that rubber seal, so don't be afraid to put some force behind it. Fitting the shower curtain on to one of the holes. Now, the experience is probably gonna be the same for you, whether you have the seams on the inside or the outside 'cause it's all very well made. But I prefer to have the seams on the inside. We're gonna fit all these loops through, and then we're going to push it as close to our rack as possible so it doesn't slide off. Get your third pole, put the elbows on the end, and it is gonna be a little bit of muscling to get them on there, but that should make it easier to push the pole into the other poles. Let's twist this a bit to get that lined up. Make sure it's seated. (poles clacking) That's seated as well. And let's bring this curtain around to create our cubicle. (curtain rail scratching) There was a good amount of extra fabric, so it was very easy to completely close the cubicle. I didn't feel like it was stretched thin at any point. And the fabric itself is on the hefty side, not so much like heavy and bulky, but more of unless it was an extremely strong wind, it would be able to hold its shape. But if you do have good winds, then this does include some stakes and guidelines to stake it down to the ground. So now that you have your shower cubicle all set up, it just goes on from there. You can get a shower arm for your Front Runner rack, and that's where you can attach your shower bag. You can get the shower caddy, which is a privacy curtain that clips from one pole to the other, and that has a pocket on it. I personally would just hang a towel from either the window or from the rack. And then I carabiner my toiletry bag to either the pole or, again, the rack, but you do you. You have all the different options there that work with this cubicle. And to compare this with something else that I have experienced for your overlanding adventures, there is the Lockrack privacy curtain. So that looks very similar to this, has a slightly different setup, but that one attaches to your Lockrack kayak here while this one attaches to your Front Runner rack. So the main difference from that one to this one is that I really like the material Front Runner uses and how they give you the option to stick down the bottom of your curtain versus the Lockrack version, which is lighter, and takes a little bit more effort to set up. But if you already have that kayak here, it's a good add-on versus this. If you already have this Slimline rack, this is a good add-on for that. So check out that one if you wanna see how they do the privacy curtain differently. But for me, if I had things like the road shower, the shower arm, or the shower bag, this is a great way to fully deck out my setup. So this right here was a look at the Front Runner privacy cubicle or shower cubicle for your Slimline racks. My name is Evangeline, and I hope you enjoyed the journey. (curtain crinkling).