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When you’re hauling kayaks, cargo boxes, or camping gear, you need bars that can take the weight. These Yakima CoreBars combine steel construction with a black vinyl coating that protects against corrosion. With a 220-lb weight capacity (always observe your vehicle’s maximum roof load), they deliver solid strength for long trips and everyday hauling alike.
Roof racks don’t have to whistle on the highway. The aero-style design of these crossbars keeps airflow smooth across the top of your vehicle, helping reduce wind noise and drag. The result is a quieter ride whether you’re cruising around town or driving cross-country with gear loaded up.
These full-length CoreBars make it easy to mount what you need—kayak carriers, cargo boxes, bike racks, or ski holders. The aerodynamic bar shape is compatible with most clamp-on accessories, so you can use the gear you already own without special adapters or complicated setups.
When you stop for lunch or leave your car overnight, it’s good to know your setup can be secured. The SkyLine towers are designed to accept Yakima Same Key System (SKS) lock cores (sold separately), which deter theft and let you lock everything up using a single key.
Durability matters when your gear lives outside. The black vinyl coating shields the steel bars from rust and wear through seasons of road trips, paddling, and camping. Yakima backs it all with a limited lifetime warranty, proving this setup is made for years of reliable use.
Alternate Instructions
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hello neighbor, this is Curt at etrailer and today we're gonna be taking a look at the Yakima crossbar system using SkyLine towers and a CoreBar crossbar on this 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee L. Now the Jeep Grand Cherokee L is a three-row vehicle. So if you're using that third row and you've got passengers loaded all over, it really does not leave any room for storage in the vehicle at all. In that case, one of your better options is to go with a roof rack system like this. Now this Yakima CoreBar system does not have a T-channel on the top like a lot of bars do. What it will allow you to do though is use the clamp-on accessories that are available on the market to work up here with this particular rack system.
Now while I'm up here, I also want you to notice here on the SkyLine tower, this portion right here can be replaced with replacement key cores. Yakima uses what they call SKS, or Same-key System. Now you can buy lock cores and keys that are all keyed alike. You can also get them keyed alike to a lot of the Yakima accessories that can go up on your roof rack as well. Now Yakima's CoreBar system, again, does not have a T-channel across the top.
These aero-style bars, which are great for wind resistant and noise reduction, compared to square or circle bars, are made of steel, as opposed to aluminum. So it gives them a capacity of 220 pounds. Now bear in mind you always wanna check your owner's manual, because your roof capacity may be different than the bars themselves. We are limited to whatever the lower capacity is. So if your roof capacity isn't 220 pounds, the bars can still be used, but you have to keep in mind that the roof dictates your minimum capacity.
Now while we're up here, I'd like to take a few measurements so that we can take care of what kind of clearances we might have, both between the bars, under, and total clearance above the car as well. So if you're concerned about low-clearance areas, these bars are going to give us a measurement off of the roof at about just a hair under 5 1/2 inches. So a decent amount there up on the top. Now anytime that you want to be concerned about that is if you're going into a low-clearance area like a garage. It's also something that you don't wanna run through a car wash.
These would wanna be removed for that. So that's a little side note that you wanna keep in mind. So basically that's gonna add about 5 1/2 inches to the overall height of your car. So clearance under the bar, if you're concerned with a sunroof or moonroof working for you, is going to come to about 4 1/4 inches, maybe just under 4 1/2. So bear that in mind if you have any concerns about working with your sunroof or moonroof. One of the other concerns that we might have is the crossbar spread. A lot of rooftop accessories have a minimum and a maximum crossbar spread that you're allowed to use. So we're gonna go ahead and see if we can get these about as close to center to center as possible. And that measurement is gonna give us about 26, maybe 26 1/4 inches. And that's actually a great spread. Usually what we want is somewhere in between 24 and 30 inches. That's about where most rooftop accessories are limited to, as far as how far apart you can use the mounting points. But given all that, this is a great setup for this particular vehicle. It should work with a lot of different accessories, and really help you out with those storage issues when you have a full car with all the passengers inside. So this is an overhang crossbar system, and overhang has a lot of great advantages, one of which is that if you wanna fit more items up on the roof, you do have the option of mounting on the outside of the towers. In this particular case, we're gonna end up with about five inches of overhang on this. So that really gives us a good option to clamp something on outside of the tower if we wanna put something else side by side with it on the passenger side of the vehicle. Now one of the big disadvantages, well not really a disadvantage, but a concern that a lot of people have when they're using overhang bars is, am I in danger of hitting my head on it Well, in the case of these 50 inch bars that we have on this system, they really don't even go past the door threshold. So I wouldn't feel in any danger at all of hitting my head on anything up there, much less the bars themselves, as I'm getting in and out of the vehicle. Now that we've gotten all that, and talked about all that, why don't we take a look at exactly how we got these mounted on the roof. So now that we're up here on the roof of the vehicle, we're gonna have to go ahead and prep these rails. We have already installed the front bar, but you may wanna take a look on the '23 Grand Cherokee L. You actually have three sets of mounting points up here. If you're gonna do a roof rack like we're doing today, we would suggest the front two mounting points. That way you get the proper crossbar spread, and loading and unloading it is gonna be a bit easier since the door, the rear door on this vehicle, is much closer to this area right here. So to get that ready, what we're gonna do is take a simple flathead, if you don't have a trim tool, and we're gonna go ahead and lift under and pop these little plugs out to expose the bolt holes that are gonna allow us to mount our landing pads. Now that we've got that done, we'll grab our landing pads and mount them up here on the rail. Okay, so we brought our landing pad up along with the bolt and washer to mount it, and the Allen key that comes with the kit as well. So you're gonna notice that there are two holes up here in this slot. And what we've found is this front mounting point here, despite this interfering with it a little bit, actually still fits the best. So it's a bit of a tight fit, but being that this is a a rubber on the landing pad, you can actually kind of squeeze it in there and make it fit properly. So we're gonna go ahead and take our first bolt and washer, thread it through, and we're gonna put it through this mounting point right here. Once we get that in, we'll take our Allen key and we'll go ahead and tighten that down. So you see there's a few options as far as the front mounting hole that you can use. We played around with a little bit. And while you can use this front mounting hole, these tow hooks really do interfere with how it goes on. It's possible, because of the soft rubber back here, to really maneuver it. But honestly, mounting it through this hole here, you do have to press it down a bit to get that mounted right, but we're finding that this is the proper mounting hole for the back. In the front, however, the proper mounting hole does look like it will be the front hole here, and then of course the slotted hole, so that you can maneuver it back and forth a little bit if necessary to find it. But now that we've got the proper mounting holes in position, we're gonna go ahead and tighten this down, and then we'll get our crossbar prepped to put up here as well. Now we we inchesre mentioning how it could be a little bit tricky to get these mounted, and there will be times when you wanna perhaps drive the vehicle without the bars on them at all, whether it be for clearance, or any other issue similar to that, or running it through a car wash, because you really don't wanna do that with crossbars on your vehicle. The Yakima cat comes with these covers though, so you can leave these on after removing the bars, and protect them by just simply snapping these covers on, and they look really nice and clean on the car. And you're ready to hit the road without the bars, if necessary. So now that we've got our landing pads up, we're gonna go ahead and attach the SkyLine towers to the CoreBar, and I'm gonna show you exactly how that's done. Now because of the way these mounts are made, you could see that they're made in kind of a specific shape, we're gonna have to be very careful about which side of the vehicle these go on, and that's gonna reflect the direction of the bar. So being an aero-style bar, we do wanna make sure that the wider part of the bar is always facing the front of the vehicle. Therefore, I've got these set up so that we've got our passenger side here, again with the wider side in the front. And I'm gonna show you how to assemble the driver's side here before we put them on the bar itself. So it's really very simple. You'll find this bolt in the middle here, and you'll find in there we've got the head that we can use our torquing tool from Yakima to adjust. So what we'll wanna do is make sure that the opening here is facing the outside of the vehicle. We're gonna go ahead and attach it so that the wider side is forward by putting it down in that slot over the bolt, turning it over and tightening it down from there. Now I do advise we don't wanna tighten this down all the way just yet. Reason being is that the way that this is made, we wanna be able to have room up at the top. If we go down too far, we won't be able to have room to slide the bar through. So we wanna attach it so that it's secure, but leave enough height that the bar is actually going to slip through. So now that we have those together, we're gonna go ahead and take the end caps off of our bar. As such, we're gonna simply glide it in from there. And again, I left it looser, otherwise this would be very difficult to do. And once I have that over a bit, I'm gonna go ahead and repeat the process on the other side. So again, we're gonna take the end cap off of the CoreBar. We're gonna take our SkyLine tower with the attachment and feed the bar right through as such. Again, if you tighten this down too much on the offset, you will not be able to slide this on. We need that slack. Now that we have these on, let's go ahead and go up to the roof and show how we'll mount it from there. So now we're gonna go ahead and mount these up in the rear bar position. We already have the front bar mounted. And the way that we're going to attach these to the landing pads is through this piston mount right here. So as the SkyLine tower opens or closes, that piston is gonna move. In the closed position, it will engage and lock in. So we're gonna leave it in the open position so that we'll be able to mount it in the gaps on the landing pads above. So again, we put everything on, making sure that the wider part of the bar is in the front position, going toward the front of the vehicle. We're gonna reach over and just try to slip that right into place over there. Sometimes it might be easier to let it rest while we mount one side and go over and find the other. But it's gonna slip right in between those gaps, just like so. Now we're gonna go ahead and leave this here. We're gonna do the same adjustment to the other side, make sure they're both mounted up and in position. So once we've got everything in the proper slots, we're able to maneuver the bar back and forth a little bit, 'cause we left it a little bit loose, back and forth a little bit until we measure an equal amount of overhang on either side. Once we get to that point, like we have here, inside the tower, we're gonna take our Yakima torque tool and we're gonna go ahead and tighten this down so that it all locks into place nice and snug. And being a torquing tool, once we get it tight enough, we are gonna hear a pretty audible pop once we get it to the correct torque. So once we have everything mounted, tightened down, evened out, it's always a good idea to grab it and give it a good shake test. Make sure you don't have any slack or play anywhere, such as the case now. We've got everything locked down nice and tight. So we're ready to put our accessories up on the roof and embark on our next adventure. So the Yakima CoreBar system for the 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee L is actually, I think, a wonderful system to use with it. The 50-inch bars give us plenty of space to put a lot up here, along with a high weight capacity for those longer trips when you have a vehicle full of passengers, or you wanna transport something that you really don't feel like traveling in the vehicle with. So with that said, I would think that this system would be an A+ system for this vehicle. Once again, I am Curt at etrailer. Thanks for stopping by.
Ratings & Reviews
Great product! Relatively easy install, had the racks on for a few days now with no issues.
I have a 2004 Toyota Camry, my purpose is to purchase this Yakima Baseline System for Rooftop tent. My 23Zero rooftop tent weighs 130 lb, so far it's super solid. I did some minor adjustments based on the shape and level of the roof when mounting it.
Yakima SkyLine Towers are well-designed and well-executed. They easily fit into the Yakima Landing Pads and form a tight fit when closed. And they also fit nicely into the Yakima JetStream Crossbars when following the Yakima instruction manual and various YouTube videos. I did run into a snag at first where I found the rubber seal on one SkyLine Tower getting caught on the JetStream Crossbar track, but after that I was careful not to let that happen with the other towers.
I find the appearance of the Yakima SkyLine Towers to match their level of quality in materials and design.
Exactly what we needed to use our old Yakima bars and kayak sharks with our new Ford Explorer. Our old car, a Ford Expedition, used the same round Yakima bars and kayak sharks but had a different roof rack. Instead of paying $800+ to get a whole new kayak rack system... the adapters we got from etrailer helped us used all the old equipment :)
I had cross bars and landing pads on my Jeep Grand Cherokee. I bought these to put on my wife’s new Grand Cherokee L. They were extremely easy to install and now I can easily move the roof rails between the two vehicles. They are a great product as is most of Yakima’s products. I highly recommend them.
Wonderful service from Kimberly at etrailer.com. I had ordered a roof rack in December for I car I had on order. Ultimately I purchased a different vehicle more than 3 months later and the roof rack and mounting parts were not compatible. I had no problem returning the unopened products and just needed to pay the postage. Kimberly made the process easy and seamless, making sure to send the new Yakama cross bars and necessary parts. It fits beautifully on my new car and setup was fairly simple with video support and step-by-step instructions.
Great product and Sales Support from etrailer.
I bought this for my Son as a Grad/BDay gift for a Honda HR-V which has slightly odd roof/door shape
He installed it himself said the install was straightforward but the instructions could use a little improvement.
etrailer Sales Support was great, I was a little concerned about getting the right parts and the return policy. Olivia was great to work with, she offered recommendations and matched the parts to the type and vehicle it was to be installed on along with a kayak mount.
All the parts arrived in mint condition with no missing pieces.
I'll for sure return to etrailer on future purchases.
Very happy with the Yakima roof top rack kit for my 2017 Ford Edge with glass roof. The instructions were a little confusing at first, but after reading through them a couple of times while working with the product they became much clearer. The Yakima fit site was helpful as well. After the initial cross bar mounting measurements and set up, attaching and detaching the racks from the roof is a very simple process.
Very nice quality towers. Very heavy duty! They have a cool "snap" on / off mechanism for quick removal and installation.
Customer service was excellent, they called me to tell me one item was backordered and how long it would be. Package was shipped with enough packing material. Install was pretty easy, some of the Yakima measurements in the manual are a couple inches off but no big deal. This will be used to carry a box for when the family takes trips. Can pile all the luggage up top and have more room in the car. I would recommend the Yakima corebar roof rack and etrailer! Their price was lower than 2 other sites I checked.
I am thrilled this got delivered sooner than anticipated! It was quite easy to install once you started actually putting it together and measuring everything out. I like that this can easily be removed and installed onto the vehicle.
Came quickly, and I appreciate the free shipping – which is why I went with etrailer instead of ordering directly from Yakima.
My experience with etrailer has been excellent. There was going to be a potential delay in one of the products, but their customer service promptly informed me, half the price of some of their competitors so can't really complain. In the end they got the part ahead of schedule and was able to ship in a timely manner. I will definitely keep them in mind for future purchases.
Roof rack fits and works as advertised. Over the phone customer support for sales and install directions were very helpful and thorough. Geoff is an excellent brand ambassador who goes above and beyond to fulfill customer expectations. I will definitely be shopping at etrailer for my future vehicle needs. Well done!
Timely delivery of my order, as usual! Easy to install on my 2015 4Runner. After I had the mounts ready and put on both bars, I installed the front one and fine-tuned it, the second took even less time then. I now have the ability to carry up to 3 kayaks, perfect! etrailer is a great company!
These crossbars feel like they are well made and sturdy. It took less than 30 minutes to install with the Ridgeline Towers. I love the look of the bars! Can't wait to load the Kayaks up and get out on the water.
One bar slid out on our first road trip. The "grip" that it slides into can't be adjusted. I am in communication with Yakima about this as Etrailer said that's the route that I would need to go. Very frustrating.
Makes for easy and secure crossbar on/off. Covers stay on during car washes.
I have these installed on a 2022 Honda Pilot. I could not get them to fit on my raised roof rails with the included rubber gaskets. I have mounted them without the gasket but this leaves a gap between the rail and the landing pad. This seems secure but does not have a finished look. I will be trying to see how to get the gaskets to fit.
I've just recently installed this setup on my 2015 Toyota Camry.
etrailer - Shopping for this rack was fairly simple, and the shipping from etrailer was quick and reliable. I received the rack in 2 different shipments but they both arrived at the same time. etrailer made sure the all the contents were available. They also have several resourceful videos on their YouTube page, which was helpful while shopping for the rack and during a few trouble shooting items while I was installing.
Yakima Core Bar - Overall a quality product. Everything necessary was supplied, including a handy measuring tape and some very well written instructions. The fit is clean and very sturdy. The only qualm I have is that the hex hole in the large anchor bolts are a bit larger than the supplied hex driver. Toward the end of the installation, the tool was worn and ended up turning inside the bolt itself (not due to over torquing whatsoever). I ended up having to use a hex set I had in my toolbox to complete the installation because the provided tool was starting to strip out the anchor bolt. With that said, the kit is still a great kit that meets my expectations.
Wind noise is quieter than my OEM VW bars on my 2017 Volkswagen GTI. It's noticeable, but nothing extreme - I believe that's just the price you pay when adding crossbars to a vehicle.
Verdict - etrailer has definitely met my expectations, and the Yakima kit provided is a well designed kit that fits well!
Very good product. The Yakama towers and cross bars feel very solid and appears to be high quality. Very easy install. Others have complained about the instructions, but guess I'm a visual person because the pictures all seemed very clear to me and the install was very easy. They do sit higher than I expected. After adding a Rhino Rack cargo basket, we only have about 4-5" clearance below the garage door.
From start to finish, the folks at etrailer -- and I spoke to several people there, so it was a consistent corporate vibe -- were fantastic to deal with.
There were delays in getting my product that were on the supplier side and out of etrailer's control, yet etrailer folks kept me up to date and also worked on a customized solution.
My goal was to be able to carry my surfboard on the roof of our 2019 Hyundai Santa Fe to the beach more than 3 hours away. But the particular model we had had no existing racks, no recessed areas, nothing to fix racks to. Not even the dealer had a solution. I was sh*t out of luck.
But etrailer hooked me up. The racks did take me a while to put on, but most of that time was fine tuning to reduce “hum” while driving. I’m very happy with them.
Thanks to etrailer, I have gone surfing and can go surfing whenever I'd like to.
Easy website, fast shipping, quality pr oducts
My 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee used landing pads 18 to mount to the roof my newer 2023 JGC uses landing pad 19. I was able to change the pads thanks to etrailer and install my older roof rack on my newer Jeep. I love that the majority of my roof rack is upgrade-able.
These landing pads allow for the quickest and easiest install and removal of cross bars. This will be the only ones I use going forward.
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James
8/24/2025
The rack base has worked perfectly. I took my Yakima rack off my Tacoma and transferred it to a Honda Pilot and eTrailer had the correct bracket.