Yakima OffGrid Roof Cargo Basket - Steel - 62" Long x 40" Wide - 165 lbs

Video Transcript for Yakima OffGrid Roof Cargo Basket Review

Speaker 1: Today we're going to be taking a look at the Yakima line of OffGrid Rooftop Cargo Basket, offering steel construction and 165-pound capacity.Yakima's OffGrid line of baskets are going to do an excellent job at freeing up a lot of room inside your vehicle. This is going to allow you to get additional gear or passengers inside and to your destination. Something I really like about the looks of this basket, it kind of blends the best of both worlds. It looks very rugged. It looks very durable, but it still has some of the sleek contours that make it a nice looking basket.Now, these are available in four different sizes. You've got two different widths, a 40 and a 49" width, and each of those will have an extension so you can use it either in the normal size or in the extended.

That gives us a lot of versatility and helps us basically fit just about any type of roof out there on the vehicle, so smaller cars, smaller basket, larger vehicles, larger basket.Now, as far as length goes on these, this one can be a 44" or we have the 18" extension in. With the 18" extension in, we're getting up to 62", and that's going to be just about from this front edge here all the way to the back. Now, the 49" version, it's going to be 53" long without the extension. There's a 22" extension available. That's going to get you up to that 75" mark.

So, really very adjustable, or if you got the one with the extension, it's not that difficult to remove it if you need to use it for a smaller car. So it's a pretty modular system.Now just to give you an idea of the space that we've got over the top of our cross rails here, our crossbars are here and this should stay constant. To the top rail here, we're looking at about 6", to the top of our crossbar it's about 6-1/2. They use a very nice clamp system. We'll show you how to install that a little bit later, but it's really easy to set up, really easy to get things combined.

It's all in one kit so you're not going to lose hardware, not going to lose a part of the clamp or something like that. You'll see also, they're going to slide forward and back, so it gives us a lot of options to get that clamp perfectly centered over the top of our crossbar. We don't see that in a lot of other baskets. Usually we have to pick a slot and it's kind of where it's stuck.Now, the OffGrid baskets are going to have a 165-pound capacity. That gives us a lot of range there the amount of items we can pack up top.

You definitely want to keep in mind though the capacity of your vehicle's roof rack system, don't really want to exceed that.Now to add to the versatility, you can see we've got built-in crossbars. It's going to come with two of them. They're designed to clamp anywhere along the length here. As you can see, we've added a rooftop bike rack to ours, but you could very easily use kayak carriers up here or ski and snowboard carriers. Now, something to keep in mind. Whatever accessory you choose, you want to make sure they're compatible with the round bar-style roof rack system. There isn't a T-slot option up here, so T-slot accessories won't be able to be used on the basket.Now, the thing I like about the multiple sizes is it gives us options. You can see here we're using the narrower basket on top of our 4Runner, and it leaves a lot of crossbar exposed here. That could help out if we wanted to add additional bike racks or something like that to the side. On the other side of that, if we maxed it out and got another 4-1/2" on each side, we'd be able to get more gear in there and potentially have enough space to mount our bike rack, like we did, and store additional items.Now, just like any rooftop cargo basket, once you put it up on the roof of your vehicle, it's probably going to generate a little bit of noise. This is one of the better ones, stays pretty quiet, and it also includes the fairing. This a quick release fairing, so if need be we can do a full pass-through on it. We'll show you how that comes off and on later. So, overall the fairing is going to have a nice look to it. It's going to promote aerodynamics, and it's going to keep our roof basket as quite as possible.Now, another really nice stand-out feature that really separates this cargo basket from a lot of them on the market are the way they attach to the crossbar. You see, we're going to have an all-in-one foot pack kit here, which essentially means we've got the strap. This is a rubber coat strap goes around the bottom side, comes up into our clamp. This offers a really easy all-in-one latch mechanism that we're able to close down and slide our locking cover forward. They've got just locks in here now, but you can get the Yakima Same-Key System and key all of these alike if you want to keep it secured to your roof rack.You'll notice our rails here. These are going to run front to back, so that allows us a ton of adjustability in these cradles for different roof rack crossbar spreads. A lot of times with the carriers where these bars run across the vehicle rather than width, you've kind of got to pick either, yeah, this looks okay or maybe come back one. You'll have to give a little bit of give and take one way another, where with this one we can slide it anywhere along this length and it's going to be in the perfect spot each and every time.You'll see a little block here on the side. It's tough to see. It's located underneath there. That little block, we just center that right on top of our crossbar. We'll bring our strap around the bottom. It's going to slide in. You can see the two tabs that stick out are going to slide in the grooves there on either side, and then we cam it close. Now, this doesn't have to be overly tight, but we can adjust that here. By turning our knob to the right, we're going to tighten this up. By turning it to the left, we're going to loosen it so, so we can get the exact fit we need for our crossbars.That's going to be ideal for just about any crossbar system out there, whether you're using an aero-style blade like what we have here, elliptical, the factory crossbars, it's going to work out fine for, and the round and the square. So just about any roof rack system that you've got, it should be a good fit for. You'll notice you're going to have one of those at all four corners, and the nice thing is if you're using the same roof rack system, once you've got them adjusted, it's about a five-minute installation process.Now one thing to keep in mind. With the fairing installed, you're going to lose about 5-1/2 or 6" of usable space here on the front. The fairing is easily removable. It has very quick clips here. Just pull down to release. You can see that's going to pop right off from around that bar. So if you have really long items and you wanted them to be a full pass-through, you can get that out of the way. To reattach it, you just kind of spread that clamp back around and then push until you hear a little click there. You can see it's back and secure and ready for use. That can help by removing that to maximize your cargo space if you need to.Now, as we discussed before, the cargo carrier comes with two crossbars here. That way, kayak carriers, snowboard carriers, bike racks, thing like that can be easily attached. These are sold separately as well. Something I think people would use that for is maybe on the long basket, that 75" basket having three installed, or I see a lot of people starting to attach lights to rooftop cargo baskets. So you could have the two that will serve the purpose for your bike rack, ski and snowboard carriers. You could mount a third up further towards the front for your lights to be attached to. You can put these just about anywhere along the top of the cargo carrier that you want, maybe save right here at the connection points of the extension. Now, for additional versatility, there's a paddle and shovel holder designed to mount right to the OffGrid. That's going to be compatible with handle diameters 1-3/16" all the way up to 2".Now, let's take a second to compare Yakima's rooftop basket to one similar to it. The first one that comes to mind is the Rola. It's similar in size. It has the extension option so you can expand it out. The things that the Rola lack that we pick up with the Yakima here will be the cross rails. These run across, allow us to attach additional items. The fairing you'll find on the front on the Rola, it only covers a portion. That's going to lead to some additional noise. So this is going to be a quieter basket.Really, I think the versatility on this one being able to slide their crossbars front and back and the ease of installation having the one-piece clamps that are just kind of a cam lock mechanism really make a big difference as compared to that Rola. With these sliding forward and back, our crossbars aren't going to be near as much of a challenge getting it lined up properly. The Rola's run side to side, kind of like we talked about before. The other big notable difference that you'll see is the weight capacity. The Rola's rated up for 130 pounds where this one's rated up to 165 pounds.Now, we've got a nice strong steel construction. It's got the black powder coat finish on it, so I think this is going to look good for a very long time. It's going to be very sturdy for you. Our connection point here, we've got the extension in, but you'd have this on any of the baskets just single if you don't have the extension. This is going to be held together with a barrel nut from the bottom and a screw that goes through the top, so we're screwing it all the way together. We don't have any plastic inserts or anything here. This is metal like the rest of it, so it's very durable, very rugged, and really easy to put this in and out.Now as far as adjusting the crossbars on the basket, it's really pretty simple. They're going to give you a security style key here. Got the hole in the middle of it, so don't have to worry about anybody making off with them. You're just going to loosen that up, and it's just a clamp. You got your clamp portion down here. We can adjust that forward and back to any point we want on the basket.Again, the only thing I think you'll run into an issue with is if you need to mount it where these screws are. That's going to hold it up at a little bit of an angle. It's probably going to be less than desirable, but anywhere else on the basket you can make the adjustment. When you get it where you want it, then it's just a matter of tightening that back down. You don't need a ton of pressure on it. Just get it secure and that's going to draw that block that you see right up there up, grabs the bottom of that basket. It'll be nice and secure.Now, you'll notice the rear of the basket has an open design. So, unlike some of the cargo baskets that have a rail that come around the rear here, this one going to be a little more flowing. I like the looks of it. I think it could aid in loading and unloading, especially if you're loading longer items from the back. You'll be kind of be able to rest it there and it'll still be in the basket. But definitely something we wanted to point out, we don't have a cross rail here on the back side. That's going to complete our look at the Yakima line of OffGrid Rooftop Cargo Baskets.