Rhino-Rack 180 Freestanding Batwing Awning - Roof Rack Mount - Bolt On - 90 Sq Ft

Video Transcript for A Closer Look at the Rhino-Rack 180 Freestanding Batwing Awning

Hey everyone, I'm Evangeline right here at etrailer. Today we're taking a look at the Rhino Rack Bat Wing 180 Freestanding Awning. This is gonna be an awning that covers a lot of your vehicle. You can see it goes all around the side. And if you've also noticed, there's no legs. So if you want a quick and easy awning to set up that gives you a lot of shade, let's take a look at this one.

The 270 awning is a very popular awning because it wraps around the side of the vehicle and all the way to the back. What we have today is a 180, so why get that one instead Well, the big key thing here is hatch, trunk, or tailgate access. For the 270, you might not be able to open up your window or open up your hatch, but with the 180, this whole area is free and clear. You still have all this space for all your adventures, though. You have 90 square feet that you get to work with.

And when you can set up all that awning in about two minutes of work, that's impressive, especially the one that always has to set up the campsite. And you see it freestanding right now. But did you know that if you wanted to, let's say some wind kicks up or you want a little bit more height to your awning, (awning scraping) you just remove those two straps, bring down this leg, and now you have some extra support. Legs come down. This is where you can adjust the height.

You just turn the leg to tighten it down, and then now you have some extra support. You're gonna have one, two, three, four legs throughout the awnings you set up. And please, always use your guidelines. These are included with your awning. They have an S hook that makes them easy to set up, and this is what you can then use to stake using the included stakes, plus you have this tension adjuster.

So obviously we're inside a garage, can't quite stake down, and that might be a situation for you if you're parked somewhere with gravel or you're in a parking lot. You can also check out the stake sandbags we have here at etrailer where you use those for tents. Whether it's rain or shine on the forecast, you have this polycotton, really thick fabric that's designed to hold up to it. So for sunshine, you have a 50 UPF. So kind of like how you have SPF for your skin, UPF is the same UV protection, but fabric form. And for water or rain, it is watertight. So you can see here as we just put some water on the awning, all our drops just bead up. Nothing goes through, and that's why it's important to set up your awning so that the water just beads its way down and not towards your campsite. Now, I can't reiterate enough how important it is to set your awning up correctly, but also to use your best judgment when it comes to the weather. The amount of times I see people with broken arms on their awning because it was too windy when they set it up is too much. So when you set this up, you just unfold the awning, you start with the back, and you just bring that around and then hook it into the back eye bolt. And same thing goes for the front. Bring that around, that hooks into the front eye bolt. When you pull those straps tight, you get an awning that looks like this. So the important thing is setting up the awning onto your vehicle correct the first time, and then knowing what to do, and then that gives you the best experience with all the shade. Having that freestanding function is awesome if you want to be able to run around the campsite, lots of people are moving and grooving, and you just want this big old wide open space, but the option for the extra support for those windy days. However, did you know that not everyone can have this awning on their vehicle It's very important to have the right setup when it comes to your roof capabilities to carry this awning. So if you're curious about that, let's pack this up and talk about the brackets. This is what your awning will look like all packed up, all compact in its bag. And you can see here where it is secured to the roof rack. So for the 180 Freestanding Awning, it does require at least two crossbars, works best with a platform rack. But you can see here that our two crossbar setup, the third is for a different awning, looks really good. This secures into the channels of the bars. Even if you don't have Rhino Rack branded crossbars, it will still work as long as you have those standard channels. You can mount the bracket in the low position, which is what we have here, or you can mount it upwards for more height if you have those smaller cars. And then this is secured by two bolts into those channels. Those are just gonna be some square nuts. If you have the Pioneer Platform, you get the fancy-schmancy Zwifloc, which makes that process even easier. The only other thing you needed to install is the eye bolt which goes on the other side of the crossbar. Let's talk about crossbar spread. Crossbar spread is the distance from one crossbar to the other. This awning actually did not fit on my smaller vehicle because my crossbars were only about 30 inches apart. And what you need here is a crossbar spread of at least 47 inches and 1/4 of an inch, because then you'll have that support and your awning will be evenly distributed so that it can carry all that weight, which is important for a freestanding awning. You also need to make sure you don't have too much overhang. So overhang is the distance from one bar to the end. If you have too much overhang, you're get a really wonky setup. So anything that's more than around 19 1/2 inches of overhang might be a bit much. So keep those numbers in mind as you look at your roof rack for your vehicle. And if you don't yet have a roof rack, you can find a custom fit one here at etrailer, and that will help you figure out, "Yeah, I think a Bat Wing 180 would be a good fit for me." If you think this is a little too large for your vehicle, check out the Sunseeker Freestanding Awning. But today, hopefully this video was helpful for you as we took a look at the Rhino Rack Bat Wing 180 Freestanding Awning at etrailer.com.