Video Transcript for Installing the Aries Roof Rack for Jeep Wrangler with Hardtop on your 2013 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited

A.J.: What's up, everybody It's A.J. with etrailer.com. Today we're going to be checking out this Aries roof rack that attaches in the gutters of your hard top Jeep on this 2013 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. Taking a close look at these bars, you can see how unique they are. They don't look out of place on the top of this Jeep. It looks like something that would have come standard with the Jeep, because they don't look like other bars.

It's not an arrow bar, it's not a square bar, it's not just a rounded bar. It's actually separated in the middle, giving you room to run all your straps through and tie down to a bunch of different points. So whatever you're carrying up here, you're going to keep it up here.You also notice how low profile it is. It's very close to the roof, and that way it's not all the way up here. It doesn't stick out like a sore thumb.

It's low profile, stays towards the hard top. You have to look to see it, so that's kind of neat. The other thing I would be worried about, though, is clamps that go underneath. Like whatever you're going to put on here, let's say you're going to put a roof basket, sometimes those clamps are kind of thick. You want to make sure you have plenty of room in here to get those clamps to go around there.Let's actually get that measurement right now while we're talking about it.

Looks like you got an inch of space from the hard top here to the bottom of the rail. Not only do they look good and like they belong here, they're made out of black powder coat steel with a weight capacity of 150 pounds. So they're durable and they're going to last you.Another advantage it has over other roof racks is that you just throw this latch and then you can move the bars. You can move it back and forth, adjust it on your roof. And when you get where you want it, just turn it here in the top.

That pulls this part here, the clamp at the bottom up, and then throw the latch. And that's back in place, that easy.The reason that it's good is because you might not want these on there all the time. You might not want that basket on the roof all the time. You might want to save it for when you actually need it on those special trips where you need that extra room. You can throw these on there real quickly, tighten them down and you're good to go. Or maybe you have a couple of different jeeps in the family and you don't want to buy more than one roof rack, just want to move it to the one you're going to take that weekend. You could easily do that.Now, I keep telling you how easy it is to install. So let's just see how we did it. We've already got the first one upfront installed. This is what it's going to look like once you get it there. Maybe give you a better idea of what all these pieces over here are going to look like. We got the two brackets, an upper and a lower bracket. This is going to attach to the gutter here of your Jeep. You side in there like that. And if I can try and show you the view, what exactly it's doing, this parts going to rest underneath the gutter. This part is going to go through here, like this. slide up, see how it slid up on there This part's going to push down on the gutter and make it a nice tight fit.So then I'm going to put this washer and that through, and kind of thread it in to that part on that lower clamp. You want to make sure you do washer, then this upside down one here so that this plastic piece fits down in there because that's what's going to. you can see it's curved to fit this handle. So just put it in there, start tying it down and thread it into the bottom bracket.So you just push down on there and it'll start threading, you'll feel it. And something to remember as you're tying it down, you don't have to tighten it super tight because this latch, you're going to pull that over and it's going to pull it up and make it tight up in there. So don't worry about getting it super tight. Just get it a little bit. See how I tightened it too much, it's harder to actually pull down there so I'm loosening it just a couple turns. Then there we go. It's going to hold it in place.Now we've got our bolt, our washer and lock washer. And underneath is our block that we're going to screw into, to attach our bars to our bracket. Be careful, it's full of grease. So try not to get that all over your hands. And to push the block up in there, line up with the hole, just drop it back through there and screw it in. Now I got it tightened down by hand, I'm going to come back with my ratchet and finish tightening it. And you see, as you tighten with this, it's bringing it back up and off the roof. So don't worry about that if it's laying on the roof when you start to go tighten down.I'm going to hop on the other side and do the same thing. Cool. Now that you've tightened that down, go ahead, go around and make sure everything else is tight as well and give a good shake test. I'm shaking the whole Jeep and there's no rattling or movement from our roof rack so I think we're done.It really was that easy to install. It clamps down those gutters. It's got a nice tight grip on it. I can shake the whole Jeep back and forth. I like the low profile design. It looks like it was made for this Jeep. It doesn't look like it was an add-on accessory. It looks like it was supposed to be there the whole time. Well, I think that does it. I hope this helped.