Thule WingBar Edge Roof Rack for Flush Rails - Aluminum - Black - Qty 2
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2003 Acura CL
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2003 Acura CL
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This aerodynamic Thule roof rack mounts flush on your roof for a sleek, factory look. Crossbars with split rubber strips in top channels work with channel-mount and clamp-on accessories. Installs to flush rails on your vehicle's roof.
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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 with etrailer, and today we're gonna be taking a look at the Thule WingBar Edge roof rack and we're gonna see how it fits and how it installs on our 2025 Chevrolet Trax. Now the Chevrolet Trax is an excellent vehicle to carry you and your friends or family onto your next adventure. However, it leaves a little bit to be desired when it comes to cargo space. So if you have a full compliment of passengers with luggage, gear, whatever else, depending on what kind of trip you're going on, it can get crammed in here pretty quickly. And a roof rack is an excellent way to carry those extra items that either won't fit in the vehicle with you or you just don't want riding in the vehicle with you. There are options up here to put a rooftop cargo box, a rooftop basket, also kayak carriers, ski and snowboard carriers, all kinds of things that you can fit up here and take with you to make your trip that much more pleasurable.
So a few things about the Thule WingBar Edge. First and foremost, it is a flush-mounted roof rack, which means that the crossbars are going to dead-end into the towers right here. Now while you don't get as much bar space as an overhanging rack, it does provide, for most people, what is a cleaner look. And without it being an overhang, you are gonna need to mount anything you put up here kind of towards the center. The good news though is that the Trax isn't a particularly tall vehicle.
You can get up and into the door threshold and you should be able to reach across to whatever items you need really pretty easily. It's also an aero-style crossbar, which means it has this more oval shape. It makes it a lot more aerodynamic than your traditional square or round bars. There's gonna be less road vibration, and therefore less noise in your travels. These also have a 165-pound weight capacity.
However, you always wanna double-check your owner's manual for your vehicle's rooftop capacity. If it's lower than 165 pounds, then that would be the limit to the weight you can carry up here. So, from up here, let's take a few measurements and see just how it's fitting up on the roof of the Trax. Now this version of our vehicle has a flush rail to mount these on. There are specific mounting points, so you're not gonna have the ability to adjust your crossbar spread to be closer together or further apart.
With the fixed mounting, we've got our crossbars at a little over 28 inches. And for me, that's a perfect amount. Most rooftop accessories, that's gonna fall right into their minimum and maximum threshold as far as what they can be used on for a crossbar spread. So I'm pretty happy with 28 inches. The other thing we'll take a look at is how much height is this going to add to your vehicle. And this is gonna add about 4 3/4 inches of height to the vehicle. So if you're concerned with roof clearance going over somewhere low-hanging, if you know your vehicle height, add that to it and then whatever the height of your accessory is on top, and you'll get your overall clearance for those situations. Underneath the bar, we're gonna have about 3 1/4 inches of clearance, and that's actually a pretty decent amount. Most clearance that you get under these crossbars tends to be like under three inches. So if you have a sunroof or something like that, you can use that calculation to help you out and make sure you have clearance for that. The one thing though that you might run into is I had mentioned earlier that you're kind of forced to mount things in the center when you're using a flush roof rack, and we've got this big tall antenna in the back. So anything you're putting up here, you're probably gonna have to worry about clearance with this 'cause it comes up well above the top of the bars. However, you could always purchase separately out there. They do have different versions of these antenna. All you need to do is unscrew it and screw in a shorter version to get that clearance. Now because the rails up here on the Trax taper pretty sharply, we've got a longer bar in the front than we do in the back. So really, the back bar is gonna give us what our usable bar space is. And what we're gonna have up here is just a hair under 30 inches of usable bar space, and that should be pretty good for most rooftop accessories. They're gonna fit well up here on the Trax. But I had mentioned the installation, I'm gonna walk you through exactly how we got these up here right now. So your first step in the installation is going to be to add the mounts onto your flush rails up here. And there are gonna be specific locations for that. You may see some plugs up here covering up these bolt holes. If you take a flathead screwdriver or a trim tool, just go ahead and remove those, just pop 'em out, and it'll expose these bolt holes here. What you're gonna take is this bracket, and this is gonna line up with the bolts, just like that. You're also gonna have some bolts to put in. And right now, I'm just gonna get 'em threaded in, get 'em started. And because there is a wider opening, like an oval shape to the opening, I'm gonna be able to adjust this to go a little forward or a little back. Now, on my rear bar that we've already installed, I adjusted that all the way back. I'm gonna adjust my front bar all the way front. It really only makes about 1/2 inch of difference overall, but I want to create the most crossbar spread that I can. And once I get these started, and then I'm gonna go ahead and use the included L-tool and we're gonna get 'em tightened down completely. Once you're finished there, go ahead and come back and we're gonna do our tower assemblies. Now, each one of our towers, you're gonna have a clamp assembly for. They're going to be stamped with the letter A, letter B, and the letter C. And this is what you're gonna find into your vehicle specific fit kit. So when you take your tower here, go ahead and take the portion marked A, slip it through the bolt. And these arms up here, these tabs are just gonna go right over the top, just like that. Once you have that on, go ahead and turn it over. Take portion B, which is your rubber foot pad. And this is gonna have tabs that are gonna go into these slots here. You just wanna make sure that the back portion of the clamp is going up and over the center portion of your foot pad. So go ahead and press that down into place, make sure it's good and flush in there. And we'll finish that up with the C part. Now this part, you're gonna slip this tab that's on part A, over and through, and the bolt is gonna go through that center hole there. You're then gonna take this nut and we're gonna just loosely thread this on. I just want to on enough that it's going to catch and keep this all from coming apart. But we wanna leave as much slack as we can to make sure that we get on the mounts that we just installed. So the next thing you wanna do is go ahead and grab your crossbar. Now you're gonna get two different lengths of crossbar in your kit. You're gonna get a shorter bar and a longer bar. Now the shorter bar is going to go on the rear crossbar, the longer bar is gonna go on the front, and that's because the rails on the top of the Trax taper. They're closer together in the back than they are up in the front. So we've got the longer bar since we're putting on the front one. And we'll notice too that it's gonna have this kind of blade shape to it, with it being narrower in the back here. We want this aligned so that this kind of wide out portion here on our tower is going to be to the back, just like this. And it's gonna go in, just like so. When you get to here, we're gonna have this tab here. Now what we wanna do is to press that down, push it across, and get it to pop up in this opening right here. This can be a little bit tricky. What I have done in the past to help us out, 'cause right outta the box, these are pretty tight. And that's a good thing. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use this tool that's included from Thule. I'm gonna depress it down and push against it until it slips under, just like that. Now push it across, (track popping) and it's gonna pop up in that opening, and I can shorten and lengthen my bar as needed. Once we have both towers installed on the bar, we're gonna move on to our weather strip. So the first thing you want to do is get these pieces separated. And the portion with the arrows, you want facing front, the portion that's plain is gonna be facing the back. Now we've got these slots here that we're gonna be able to depress this down into. So all I'm gonna do is line it up and work my way down the line, just pressing it in. And I'll follow that up with the front portion of the weather strip, making sure that these arrows are facing forward. And keep in mind too, when I say forward, I mean the wider portion of the bar. Now we're gonna go ahead and get it rested up here on these mounts. So I'm gonna kind of very carefully kind of reach across here and get that to kind of sit down on the mount over there. Now, remember, I could push these towers in a little bit, adjusting the length of the bar until I get it to the point where I can mount on both sides. Now that A and C portion of the clamp, I want the A portion of it going behind the mount, I want the C portion in the front, and I want to kind of depress this down a little bit too to make sure it's all seated on there as much as it can be. Once I do that, I'm gonna take this bolt and I am just going to get this to where I take the slack out of it. I'm not tightening it at this point. I'm just getting some of the slack out of it just to make sure that it's not gonna move anywhere on me when I'm adjusting over on the driver's side. But once I got this in a good spot where it's not gonna be moving or sliding around, I'm gonna go ahead and do all of these steps on the driver's side. So once I have both of these on here snugly, I'm gonna ahead and grab the tool that came with the kit from Thule, and through this bolt right here, I'm gonna start tightening down. Now, I always think it's a good idea to do this incrementally. I have found that if you tighten one side down completely without doing anything on the other, it can sometimes knock it a little bit out of place. So what I'm gonna do is give it two or three turns, and then I'm gonna go over and do the same thing on the driver's side. Now I've been going back and forth and kind of turning this already, but I think it's a good idea to just bounce back and forth until you get 'em all the way tightened up. And you'll know it'll be all the way tightened up because this is actually a torquing tool as well. So we're gonna get a loud click, like that, once we know we have it tightened down completely. Once you've got that on both towers, we're ready to move on to the tower covers. So with everything tightened up and done, we're just gonna go ahead and drop this on here. So there's some tabs up at the top that'll help it slide into place, and we just wanna push it over till it clicks. Now at this point, I would get it locked. Out of the box, Thule is going to give you plastic lock cores to insert here to keep your covers on. They are slotted. So, frankly, anybody that has a flathead screwdriver, or a coin even, like a dime or a nickel or something like that, can get in there and twist it, open it up, and possibly take your roof rack if they really wanted to. You do have the opportunity through Thule's One-Key System to purchase separately a set of metal lock cores that'll all be keyed-alike. You also have the opportunity to get them keyed-alike to other Thule accessories that you may have. So if you have a bike rack or a roof box, you have the ability to get them keyed-alike, so that you don't have multiple Thule keys on your keyring. You can get it to where one Thule key is gonna work with all of your Thule items. And that was a look at the installation of the Thule WingBar Edge on our 2025 Chevrolet Trax. And if after watching this video, you've still got some questions about it, or if you've picked it up and you've used it and you've got some experiences to share, go ahead and drop those in the comments below. We would love to share your stories and your questions with other neighbors just like you so they can make the best decision for themselves. Once again, this is Curt with etrailer. Thanks for stopping by.
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