Kuat Mini Skinny Roof Cargo Basket and Bike Carrier - Steel - 60" x 24" - 160 lbs

Video Transcript for Kuat Mini Skinny Roof Cargo Basket and Bike Carrier Review

Speaker 1: Today we're gonna be taking a look at the Kuat Mini Skinny roof cargo basket and bike carrier. An extension is available for the Mini Skinny that'll add 14 inches or our Mini Skinny can be purchased together with the extension as a kit.The Kuat Mini Skinny is gonna allow you to carry one bike and your gear while still leaving plenty of room for other accessories on your roof rack system. With the kayak removed you can see just how much extra space you'll have with the Kuat Mini Skinny. It features a nine millimeter quick release skewer to secure your bike's fork. Nine millimeters is the most common size, it's gonna work with a wide variety of bikes including those with or without disc brakes. Your bike's rear tire simply rests in the basket and the included strap keeps the rear wheel secure.With the bike removed we'll go ahead and give you some dimensions.

The inside for the usable space without the extender measures 52 inches long, 20 and a quarter inches wide, and five and a quarter inches deep. With the extender it's 66 inches long. The external dimensions are 60 and a half inches long, 23 and seven-eighths inches wide, and six and three-eighths inches tall. With the extender it measures 74 and seven-eighths inches long. When adding any accessories to the roof of your vehicle it can add additional wind noise and drag.

The Kuat Skinny is a step up from other baskets, it has a custom fairing which reduces all that wind noise and drag.You can mount this to just about any roof rack system. The clamp design's gonna allow it to fit your round, square, aero, elliptical, and most factory roof rack systems. The U-bolts are rubber coated so they're not gonna scratch or harm the underside of your roof rack system. It's made out of a sturdy, steel construction with a black powder coat finish so it's gonna be resistant to rust and corrosion and it's also gonna stand up to any abuse you might put it through on your adventures.Kuat has designed the rear of the basket with an undercut feature. This is gonna help give you more clearance when opening up your rear hatch.

In this instance you can see we have plenty of space but on your vehicle it may be closer. The open design is gonna give you plenty of options to secure your cargo whether you're using a strap design or a hook. The carrier has a weight capacity of 160 pounds though you'll want to limit your bike's weight to 50 pounds and you want to be sure not to exceed your roof rack system's weight capacity and your roof's capacity.The locking covers have a unique design, they cover up our hardware so it cannot be tampered with. The Kuat Mini Skinny features a limited lifetime warranty. Matt here works with Kuat here at etrailer.com.

Matt do you have any insight with Kuat Mini Skinny Matt: Well one of the things that I really like about it is the fact that it only uses up about half of the rack. You can load up your bike and you cargo in this rack and then you've still got the whole rest of your roof rack to work with. Speaker 1: Right for anything or any other accessories you might want. Sure. Matt: It's narrower than most of our roof baskets. Speaker 1: Right which is really cool. Matt: Very nice. Speaker 1: Awesome. Do you have anything specific that our customers might want to know Matt: The one thing we did notice in the installation is that if you pop this cover off you'll notice these knobs, the tighten down knobs, tend to bump right up against this edge here. Now clearly it can still go on because we got it installed but it does make it kind of difficult with the knob. As you can see it does bump up against this- Speaker 1: And it makes contact, yeah. Matt: It does make contact but you still can use a bit of force and turn it. Speaker 1: Okay. All right well that's some good information, I appreciate that. Thank you. Matt: You're welcome. Speaker 1: Now that we've gone over the features I'll go ahead and show you how to get it installed. Now you need to be sure you have a crossbar spread between 14 and five-eighths and 35 and seven-eighths. We've got about 28 inches here so we're all set. Now this weighs about 33 pounds so you should be able to manage it yourself.Now when positioning it on my vehicle I'm going to favor the passengers side here that way I've still got room for other accessories on the other side of the roof rack system. Another thing to consider when positioning it on your roof rack system you want to be sure you still have enough room to open up your rear hatch, which we do.Now it's time to put our clamps in place. We'll first take our spacer block and we're gonna put it on the outside of our tubular bar here. We're gonna set it up just like that then we'll take the U-bolt, we're gonna bring that up underneath and between the two elongated slots here. Then we'll take the top portion of the clamp and set it directly on top. Then we'll take our two black wing nuts and begin threading those in place. Now it's a good idea to tighten these down evenly. Once you've got it tightened down all the way we can then take our locking cap and set that in place, make sure it's all the way down, and then we'll lock it up. We can repeat this process with the other three clamps.With it installed I'd like to point out that two of our clamps are lockable. I've installed one on the rear and then one on the front that way no one can remove our basket. With it installed we're ready to load up some cargo, a bike, or both. We're gonna make sure that that skewer is opened up, we'll also want to be sure to remove that front tire. Once we've got it in place we can close up our skewer. Now what we want to do is be sure that when we do close up our skewer it holds the bike in place. As you can see that was just a little bit loose, I'm gonna tighten it up a little bit, this will take both hands, you want to give it a half a turn or a full turn, and then just kind of check it. That looks pretty good, close it up, and we're all set.Here on the back we'll take our included wind strap, I'm gonna go underneath my roof basket there, through my wheel, and I'm gonna go twice. I'm gonna feed it through the buckle and then pull it nice and tight. We'll take that excess and just kind of feed it through that way it's not flapping around, just like that.There was enough room left I was able to load up some cargo as well, now let's go ahead and take it out on our test course and see how it performs. Here on our test course let's first go into our slalom, this is gonna show side to side action such as going around corners or evasive maneuvering. Then onto our solid speed bumps, this is gonna show an up and down action such as pulling in and out of a drive way or out of a parking lot. Then finally onto our alternating speed bumps, this is gonna show a twisting action such as going over potholes or uneven pavement.That's gonna complete our look at the Kuat Mini Skinny roof cargo basket and bike carrier.