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This sleek, aerodynamic roof rack provides space to carry gear on your vehicle. Crossbars with push-down rubber strips in top channels work with channel-mount and clamp-on accessories. Installs on your vehicle's naked roof.
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Alternate Instructions
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
This is Curt with etrailer, and today we're gonna take a look at the INNO Aero Roof Rack and we're gonna see how it fits and how it installs on our 2025 Mazda CX-5. When it comes to the CX-5, you do have a decent amount of cargo space, but if you've got a full complement of passengers, that cargo space is gonna run out really, really fast, especially if everybody's got some stuff to bring with them. You also might run into the case where you've got some items with you that either won't fit in the vehicle at all, or you just don't want riding in the vehicle with you, even if it did. If that's the case, then a roof rack is gonna offer a great alternative to using the hitch and trailer in order to get those items to and from your destination. The types of things that you can use on a roof rack are kayak carriers, bike carriers, ski and snowboard carriers, rooftop baskets and rooftop cargo boxes, all of which are gonna help you get those items to and from your adventure. In this case, what we have here is an aero style crossbar, and what that means is that it's got this more ovular elliptical shape.
This is gonna be a lot more aerodynamic than your traditional round or square bars, and therefore it's gonna create a lot less noise as you're going down the road. This type of bar can be used with clamp-mounted accessories as well as T-track accessories up here on the top. And to access that T-track, you can just remove your end cap, push down on the weather stripping and slide your accessory over into place. One of the things about INNO when they design their roof racks, they like to use a lot of proportional fits. And what that means on your roof rack is that basically we've got two different sized bars here, we've got a longer one and a shorter one, and that's because the roof on the top of your CX-5 is going to taper as it gets toward the back of the vehicle.
So, your roof is gonna be closer together further back than it is toward the front. INNO being proportionally minded, they like to see the same amount of overhang on each one. Therefore, when it comes to the overhang on a lot of roof racks, if for instance, these were both the same size and this bar was sticking out further from the tower, it would give us an opportunity to probably use the overhang as far as our clamp mounted accessories in order to load things up side by side. However, because of the way this is made, if I put something on the outside here, as I come straight back, there's nothing to grab onto back here, they just don't line up that way. So, unfortunately, when it comes to the clamp-mounted accessories, we're pretty much gonna be subject to using the bar from the inside of the towers.
However, it's not gonna stop us from using the T-track accessories, so that is still gonna be accessible. It's just that the maximum bar space we're gonna have is gonna be referred to by our rear bar. First measurement that I want to take is gonna be for our crossbar spread. Now, we'll be going over the installation momentarily, but you'll find when installing this that we're not allowed to just put these bars wherever we want. So, we're gonna have a fixed crossbar spread, and that measurement is basically the distance between both of my bars.
And the reason it's such an important measurement is because every rooftop accessory has a minimum and a maximum crossbar spread that is allowable in order to use that accessory. So, if I go from the middle of my front bar to the middle of my second bar, I'm gonna end up with a crossbar spread of about 27 inches, and that's a pretty good spread. Most of the minimum maximum for rooftop accessories end up being in between that 25 to 30 inch window. So, 27 inches provides a good enough spread that I know that most rooftop accessories are gonna work with this. Now, the other measurements I'm gonna take is gonna be basically, what kind of height is this adding to the CX-5 So, if we go from the middle of our roof to the top of our second bar, we're at 4 1/4 inches. Now at 4 1/4 inches if you know your vehicle height and you know your accessory height, you could add that 4 1/4 inches to get your overall vehicle height with the accessory on top, and that'll help you determine your rooftop clearance if you go anywhere with a low clearance like maybe under a bridge, into a parking garage or something like that. We're also gonna take a measurement of what's available underneath our bar, which is gonna be just a hair under three inches. Now, the reason that that's important is we wanna make sure that we know what can fit around here as far as clamp-mounted accessories and three plus inches, that's plenty of room for any clamp-mounted accessory that I've come across to be able to work. It's also good to know because this actually clears our sharkfin antenna back there, so anything I'm putting on top of the bar, I know is gonna be able to clear that antenna as well. It's also important if you have a model with a sunroof, that way you can determine whether you know if you measure your sunroof out, whether that's gonna clear under the bar and still be usable while you keep the bars attached. Now, the last measurement that I want to take is I had mentioned that when it comes to clamp-mounted accessories, we're gonna be pretty limited to the inside of our rear bar, what's inside the towers. So, just to give you an idea of how much we're gonna have in that regard, you're gonna have about 38.5 inches worth of bar space back here to use those clamp-mounted accessories. Now, that we've got a good idea of what the INNO Aero Roof Rack does and how it fits on the CX-5, let's take a look at how it's installed. As we begin our installation, just an important thing to know. When it comes to INNO Crossbars, you're gonna get two different sizes. You're gonna have a longer one and a shorter one. We've already got our rear bar on, so we've got the longer bar on the table here. We're just gonna go ahead and turn that over on its backside and here is what we'll find. So, the first thing I'm gonna do is remove my end cap, just like so. What I'll do then is this here, I'm gonna slide this all the way out until it exposes this cavity right here, which I'm gonna use this piece, which is gonna come in your foot kit or your tower kit, and it's gonna have a little notch here and there's a notch in there to fit into it. And what this will do is just come up from underneath here and we're gonna snap it into place. And once it's in place like this, we'll have this big square cavity to the outside bolt hole to the inside. We're just gonna slide that back in, and once we get here, we're gonna depress this tab and we'll be able to open the hole cavity up and make it accessible. Now, go ahead and grab one of your towers and we're gonna turn that over just like this. Then I'm gonna grab this rubber footpad that we have right here. Now, on the back you'll see indentations for where the tops of these screws are gonna go. So, it's really easy to get it aligned, but what you want to do is pay very close attention to your instructions. There's a number stamped on the rubber pads, and there is a different number for our front bar and for our rear bar. So, being our front bar, that's gonna be footpad 425, we're gonna be putting that into place right where it looks like it'll go. So, we're gonna make sure that we depress this down and get it flushed all the way around. Just make sure it goes all the way in. And once I just kind of check all the seams, make sure that's on there all the way, we're in good shape. Now, what I'll do is I'll turn it over just like this. Now, this bolt needs to be going toward the outside of the bar. So, as you can see from the top right here, these three spots on the top of my tower are gonna fit perfectly into these three cavities right here. So, this large kind of T-slot looking part is gonna drop in here. The bolt is gonna drop in here. So, we're just gonna go ahead and turn it over and get that all aligned, and into place just like that. Once we have that in there and in place, we're gonna slide it over just like this, and that tab will pop back out and it'll lock it in place. At this point, I'm also going to replace my end cap. The very center of the underside of your crossbar is gonna have a sticker on it, that's just marking the exact center of your bar. If you pay attention to your instructions, you're going to see that for both the front and the rear bar, it's going to give you a measurement for how far apart our feet or our towers are supposed to be. So, you'll be measuring from this point here to the hash that's right here on either side of this bolt on the underside of our tower. They're gonna provide you with a paper measuring tape, so you can go ahead and get that measured out. Our front bar needs to be measuring at 21.5 inches, and once that we have that in place, you're gonna have this longer Allen wrench with it through that bolt right there. We're gonna go ahead and tighten it down, and that is going to secure our bar onto the tower and keep that in place. Now, there's actually one more thing to do before we get this up on our roof. I almost forgot about it myself, but you're gonna get these kind of rectangular-foam blocks. And where those are gonna go is basically in here to cover up this air cavity. When you have air cavities like this in your roof rack, as you're going down the highway, especially at higher speeds, the air is gonna go right across this cavity and it's gonna create a lot of noise, and this is gonna be right outside of your window. So, it would make it very, very uncomfortable to drive with the windows down, believe me. So, in order to eliminate that, we can remove our end cap, slip this in there, essentially to cover up that whole cavity. Now, I take a scissor and knife and just cut it off at the end before replacing my end cap, but we're not doing a permanent install today, so I'm not gonna go through that step, but that is something I would highly recommend you do. It's just gonna give you a much more comfortable ride as you use your roof rack. In your instructions, you're going to see that INNO tells you exactly where on your roof that they want your bar placed. So, that is gonna be measured from the door seam. So, for our front bar, the measurement that they want to see from this door seam to the center of this bolt is 7 3/4 inches. On our back bar, the measurement they give us from here to the center of the bolt is gonna be 18.5 inches. So, we're gonna go ahead and use our measuring tape, and we are gonna double check this to be 7 3/4 inches lines right up with it. But we're also gonna go over to the passenger side and take that same measurement. I really need to make sure that my towers are directly across from one another. That's gonna guarantee that our bars are gonna be perfectly parallel and we'll be able to carry our cargo safely. Once you have it in place where it needs to be, the next thing we want to do is this bolt and washer and bushing that we have right here. We're just gonna want to get that out. So, I'm gonna unscrew that, and I am gonna keep this aside. Now I'm gonna grab my clamp. Now, the front and the rear clamps are both different, so like with our foot pads, we wanna pay attention to the instructions and make sure we're putting the right part in the right place. The clamps for the front are gonna be stamped with a 134. It'll be right in this area here. It's very, very dim and hard to see probably on camera, but this is 134 going on our front bar. And what we'll do is we're going to place this on, this cavity right under here should be fitting right over this piece just like so. I'm gonna hold it up, flush under here before grabbing my bolt and retreading it. Now, I'm not gonna thread it on too tightly yet. I'm just going to get this into position to where this hook is snug and not dangling around, but I don't want to tighten it up too much yet. Reason being is I wanna make sure both sides, driver and passenger are snug. If I over-tighten this side without tightening down or snugging up the passenger side at all, it'll likely knock that tower out of place. I'll have to undo everything and remeasure to make sure I've got my placement right. If I just get it into a position where it's not gonna go anywhere and not gonna move and the clamp isn't gonna dangle down at all, I'll be in a really good place to do that and go from there. Now, once I get it up to where it's gonna hard to thread my hand, you are gonna get a tool from INNO. You just take it apart, it's a T handle like this, and I'm gonna use that to get the last few turns and make sure that this is right where I want it. Okay, so now it's in a good spot. It's still a little movable, but it's not really going anywhere. Before I start tightening down from this angle, I just wanted to point something out. This channel up here on the roof of our CX-5, gets really, really aggressive at about this point coming to the windshield. So, do expect to have some gap here underneath your rubber foot pad. It's gonna be actually pretty natural to have some gapping there, so don't be alarmed that you have a bad fit if you see that. But with that being said, I've got both my driver and my passenger side snug down. What I'm gonna do at this point is go ahead and grab my INNO tool, and I'm gonna actually start doing some real tightening. Now, again, I don't want to overtighten one side and risk moving the other side out of place, even though they're both pretty snug at this point. So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do this incrementally. I'm gonna maybe do, you know, three or four turns on this side, and then move over to the passenger side and do the same thing, and I'm just gonna work my way back and forth until I get it tightened down all the way. This tool is a torquing tool, so it's gonna let us know exactly when we have it tightened down to spec. When we hear loud click, that means it's completely tightened down. Once you get that click out of your tool, I like to play it safe, just go ahead and grab it, give it a bit of a shake test. If the vehicle's rocking back and forth, but our bar isn't and our towers aren't, then I know we've got a good secure hold. At this point, the only thing we have left to do is to put on our tower cover. Now, before I do, one of the cool things that I really like about INNO that I want to go over is that you do get metal lock cores with keys right outta the box. A lot of other roof rack kits that you get from other manufacturers, they'll come with a plastic lock core that you can undo with a, you know, flathead screwdriver if you want to. You have to purchase your metal lock cores and keys separately. Not so within INNO, they're going to be available right outta the box. So, in order to put your cover on, we're gonna have these two hooks right here. They're gonna go over these two posts that we find down at the bottom of our tower, and it's just gonna go up and click into place. We'll unlock it first, then it'll click into place. At this point, we can go ahead and lock it up, and our crossbars are gonna be secure to the vehicle. That's really all there is to it when it comes to the installation. So, if after watching this video, you've still got some questions about the INNO Aero Roof Rack on your Mazda CX-5, go ahead and leave those questions in the comments below. We would love to answer those for you. It's only gonna help other neighbors just like you to make the best decision for themselves. Once again, this is Curt with etrailer, thanks for stopping by.
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