Video Transcript for Comprehensive Review: Replacement Torque Wrench for Yakima StreamLine Towers

Ellen: Hey everyone. I'm Ellen here at etrailer.com and today we're going to be taking a quick look at the Yakima Replacement Torque Wrench for any Yakima bars. Now, this is going to work for several different of the streamlined towers, including the BaseLine, RidgeLine, SkyLine and TimberLine Towers. Basically, this is just a small torque wrench to make sure that you don't over-tighten your crossbars but that you still get a good torque on them.Now I have one of those Yakima towers, just for demonstration. This is the Yakima Baseline. These are available separately here at etrailer.com if you want to pick up a roof rack, which you probably will since you're buying your replacement.

But, basically you're just going to open this up, and it has this little tab from the bars still on there, we just have it left in place for ease of use for us as far as test-fitting things goes, but basically you drop that down in there and then whenever you turn this, as soon as it gets tight to 3.5 Newton-Meters, it's going to click and let you know that it's tight enough. So you can hear that kind of snap. It's not anything breaking. It's just the sound that this is letting you know that you've reached that tightness, so you can stop and not actually break anything.This has a pretty good handle as far as how it feels in your hand. There are four little kind of indentations in it, so it lets you get a pretty good grip.

And my hands aren't the biggest in the world, but they're not the smallest either. I think it'll work out for a lot of different size hands to make it easy to work with. Even if you've got gloves on, if you're in the snow, out in the sun, sweating a little bit, it gives you enough grip that you should be able to get everything loosened and tightened as you need to.Now, you don't necessarily have to use this with just Yakima products. This wrench is a four-millimeter Allen key or a hex key. So, pretty much anything that you want to tighten down to that 3.5 Newton-Meters before it breaks, you can use it for that.

So, if you have a bike that maybe you're working on and it has that same size bolt head, and you only want to tighten it down that much, it'll work out just fine for that. It's made of a metal composite that has an internal mechanism that allows that torque wrench to operate, so again, in any weather should work out, just fine. Keeps your crossbars tight to your vehicle so you know that you're going to get a good hold on there, but not tight-knit so much that you crush anything.Just for reference, I'm going to give you some measurements. So the total length of our wrench is a little over eight inches, maybe eight and a quarter. The widest point of that handle is about an inch and a half wide.

The handle portion itself is about four inches and an eighth. And then our actual tightening portion is about four inches long. Again, this end is a four-millimeter, has a little kind of rounded end, so you can get at it from any angle. So even if it's a little bit off and it's harder to get to, you should still be able to get a good purchase and tighten or loosen any bolt with that head. And that's going to do it for our look at the Replacement Torque Wrench for Yakima StreamLine Towers..