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This aerodynamic, flush-mount roof rack lets you carry gear and cargo on your vehicle while maintaining a clean, factory look. Crossbars work with channel-mount and clamp-on accessories. Installs to fixed mounting points on your vehicle's roof.
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Specs:
Alternate Instructions
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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 SkyLine FX roof rack system on a 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee L. Now the SkyLine FX is a flush mount system. And by that, it just means it's got these really clean edges and the crossbars themselves dead end into these towers. There's not gonna be any overhang to it, so it does give a bit of a cleaner, more of a factory look on the top of most vehicles. However, what we're gonna be missing out of that is gonna be some of that extra overhang to add more space up to the crossbars and also make them a bit more accessible.
This is a very tall vehicle, so for anybody considering these, just keep in mind that anything that we're gonna mount up here is gonna be further away from the edge of the vehicle. So if you're a shorter person, it could sometimes be a little bit hard to reach up here, but we've got a remedy for that. This item here is what's called the Moki doorstep. Now the way this will work is you'll open it up just like that. It's gonna work inside this door hook right here by lifting up and over, and creating an extra step to get up on the vehicle.
It's going to have a 400 pound weight limit. So don't be afraid to get, you know, two feet up here if you really need to. But if you're a shorter person that might have trouble accessing this up here, this is gonna be something that's gonna come in very handy as far as being able to reach over inside of a cargo carrier. Maybe help, you know, get some bikes down, or anything else that you're transporting on your roof. Now I had mentioned that being a flush mount system, we're gonna have less bar space up here than we would normally with an overhang system.
So let's take a look and see exactly what kind of room we have up here to mount our accessories. So as far as usable bar space, we're gonna end up with just a hair under 29 inches here, and it should be pretty similar to the back. The back actually is just a hair less than 28 inches. So as long as the mounting system on your rooftop accessory doesn't exceed that 28 inches, we should be able to use it up here on the roof. Now some other concerns that you might have would be clearance: Just how much taller the does this system make my vehicle Now on this system, the tower is actually taller than the bar.
So if we take that measurement, this system is going to add about 4 and 3/4 inches to the overall height of your vehicle. And if we've got concerns with clearance underneath the bar, if you have a working sunroof or moonroof, the clearance underneath the bar comes out to just about at three inches. So bear that in mind if you're carrying anything up here, you have just the bars up here and you want to open that sunroof or moonroof. The last measurement that we want to take is what is our crossbar spread These are on fixed mounting points so you won't be able to really adjust the width of the bars for different accessories. So it's good to keep in mind exactly what kind of room we have to work with. So if I'm going from the center of the track system to center of the track system, we end up with 26 and 1/4 inches, and I actually think that's pretty good. Usually anything between 24 and 30 inches is able to accommodate most rooftop accessories. Now that we've gone over some of the features and specs of this roof rack system, let's take a look at how we got it installed. 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 want to 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 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 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 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 want to perhaps drive the vehicle without the bars on 'em 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 want to do that with crossbars on your vehicle. The Yakima kit 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. Now that we've got our landing pads mounted, let's take a look at the bar itself. So this is a flush bar system. It is, what they call, an aero-style bar, so it's got a bit of an ovular shape. Now aerodynamically, this is really gonna help cut down on wind resistance and therefore, a lot of the noise you can get from a roof rack when you're traveling down the road. You can mount rooftop accessories either through the clamp system, which would wrap around the bar completely, or you can use the track-mounted system. Now on overhang bars, you're able to access those tracks from the outside by pulling off the end caps. On a flush mount system, we're really not gonna be able to do that. They leave the opening in the middle here so that you can press down on this rubber strip and then slide those track mounted accessories over. Now to prepare for the install, the first thing we're going to do is remove this end cap here. We're gonna also pull this tab down once it's unlocked. So you see right here, we're gonna be able to use a flathead to turn it to unlock in the vertical position. Now this area right here can actually be replaced with a key core. So Yakima uses what they call the SKS or same key system. They can be bought in multiples that are all keyed alike so that you can put a lock core at the ends of all of your bars and some of your rooftop accessories and still use the same key for all of them. So we're gonna go ahead and get this unlocked. Once we do that, we'll be able to pull this tab down. Now let me flip this over and show you the underside because this is how it's going to attach. So with this disengaged, as we push it down to close it, you'll notice these pistons come out and that is what's going to be attaching it to our footpad. The next place we're gonna pay attention to is this area right here, which you could still access even with this closed. Using the Yakima tool that comes with the crossbars, you'll be able to take that in. We're gonna loosen it up just a little bit, just a couple turns is usually all that's needed. And what that's gonna allow for is this to slide back and forth and adjust to the perfect width to go on this particular vehicle. Now when mounting these on your roof, it is important to remember that the wider part of the bar is always gonna be facing forward. If you need a reminder of that, they do actually etch a little bit of a diagram right here that shows which direction it needs to go in case you need a reminder. So right now, we're going to disengage those pistons. We'll get it up on the roof and mount it to our foot pads. With the pistons open and disengage, we're gonna go ahead and lay one right in over here in the mounting track. We kept it loose so we can make sure that we can adjust the length of it to come over and attach in on this side as well. Okay, now that we've got them seated properly, we can go ahead and take our tool and make the adjustment to tighten this down so that it doesn't try to slide back and forth. And then we'll close these up and have it locked in place. Okay, so now that we've got everything seated correctly, we're gonna go ahead and close this gray part here. Make sure it goes down all the way and clicks into place. That's gonna engage those pistons and secure it to our feet. Now, we'll be able to take our flathead and lock it here. Now of course, if you replace that with the SKS key core system, this is the point where we'll just go ahead and lock it. We've got that down. Now what we're gonna want to do is take our Yakima tool again and we're going to tighten this down until we hear a good pop. Just like that. This is a torquing tool, so it'll let you know exactly when we've got it tight enough. At this point, we've got everything secured down. We're ready to replace our end cap. Once it's in there, we're gonna go ahead and give this a good shake. Make sure everything is secure. This seems all nice and tight and ready to go. So it looks like we can load a rooftop accessory and hit the road. So overall, the Yakima SkyLine FX roof rack system is a good roof rack for your Grand Cherokee L as long as aesthetics are a little more important than utility. I think if you really want to get more up here on your roof rack, we're gonna maybe perhaps visit an overhanging bar system. However, aesthetically this is a much more pleasing look as it does look more of a factory feel than an overhanging bar would. And being at 165 pound weight capacity, and double check your owner's manual because we wanna make sure that your roof can handle at least that much as well. But with that weight capacity, it is actually comparable to even most of the overhanging systems. So as long as you're okay with the limited bar space, this does offer a cleaner look. It is a very easy system to remove if you need to. If you're going somewhere worried about clearance or if you wanted run it through an automatic car wash, you'd wanna remove the bars. So I would say overall, this is a good roof rack system as long as you know what you're using it for and know what kind of limitations you might have with it. So once again, this is Curt at etrailer. Thanks for stopping by.
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