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This strong Thule roof rack lets you carry gear on your vehicle. Galvanized steel crossbars accommodate clamp-on accessories. Polymer coating provides extra grip for your cargo. Installs on your vehicle's naked roof.
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Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hi everyone. Aiden here with etrailer. Today we're taking a look at our Thule Roof Rack system on our 2021 Jeep Gladiator. This system's gonna utilize our Thule Square Bar Evo Crossbars, those are gonna be 60 inches long as well as our Thule Rapid Gutter Low Feet. That's going to sit into the gutter of our hard top and clamp down around them. Let's check it out.
The first part of our system here is gonna be those square bars. It's gonna be a steel construction with a 220 pound weight capacity. With that capacity in mind, you wanna look at your feet as well as your roof weight capacity and go by the lowest rated component. More often than not, the square bars are rated a little bit higher than other components like our rapid feet, so we do want to go by the lowest rated component. It is a solid bar, so there's no T track or anything up top.
That's fine if you only plan on using clamp-around accessories, which with these bars should work really well. Because of the size, I don't think you'll run into any issues where the clamps don't fit. But if you do have accessories that you want to use a T slot up top, maybe check out some arrow bars. Thule has plenty of options for those as well and they will work with those rapid gutter feet. The rapid gutter feet are a tool-free installation using these hand knobs to loosen or tighten the clamps around the gutter and it results in a very strong hold, nothing's moving here.
You've got a padding inside to protect the gutter as well and the whole thing is going to be lockable if you choose to pick up the lock core separately. As far as measurements go, we do want to check out how high it's sitting up off the roof as well as the room we have underneath. So between the roof and the bottom of the crossbar we've got two and a half inches and from the roof to the top of the crossbar is just under three and a half inches. So it doesn't add too much height to the roof but it still maintains a good amount of room underneath for those clamp-around accessories. Crossbar spread is really up to you and whatever accessories you plan on carrying.
If your accessories do have a specific crossbar spread you need to have, that's good because these rain gutters travel the whole length of the vehicle and we can adjust these front to back to get a specific spread. With that in mind, the installation process gonna be really straightforward. Let's check out how we did that now. Install's pretty straightforward. We've got our setup here with the 60 and square bars and as far as the gutter mount foot goes that's going to have the main section here. This part will slide into the T track on the underside of our square bar over here but before we do that, we wanna get some assembly done. This rubber pad will actually slide around the base here and give the gutter some padding. So I'm gonna feed the foot in and kind of just stretch this other side over, center it up so it's all padded. Then we've got our T bolt that'll go from the inside to the out. We'll follow that up with this clamp that'll sit on the underside of the gutter, this portion will be in the gutter. Follow that up with a flat washer and the hand knob. Just spread that on a little bit. We want it to be a little bit loose still because as you tighten it down, it's going to draw everything tight and we want it to be adjustable right now. Once you've got everything assembled we can go and slide it onto the bar, making sure that the part that's gonna sit on the gutter is towards the outside and don't slide it in too far because it will need to be fairly spread out at least with our 60 inch bars here. And then we can take our end cap that's with our crossbars and attach that. With this, I found that if you get it mostly started on it's best to just give it a firm hit and you'll hear it kind of click in. Right there it's locked in nice and secure, then we can get this onto the roof. And then setting it up into place, being sure to carefully get it aligned with the gutter if you're able to. If you've got a second set of hands on the other side it certainly helps, but it's not totally necessary. I'm going to get this one over here set up in the gutter and I'll go round to the other side and get that one set up too. Once both feet are seated into the gutters properly with the clamp on the underside, we can check our crossbar spread on either end making sure that the bars are running parallel to each other and they are, and then we can just tighten these down using the hand knobs. And I can't stress how simple this is. And once this is tightened down, everything's secured you're pretty much done. The install process is really quick. Comparing this to a system I've worked with before the Exposed Racks for Jeep Hardtops, I like this a bit better just because it's so much quicker to install. It's tool free with these hand knobs and while I might like the look and the ruggedness of the Exposed Racks a bit better, I think for simple sports and rec and just getting things up on the roof quickly, this is the better way to go. Overall, I think this is a really nice system. With these, it's gonna be really quick and easy to put on and it's gonna work well for those sports and rec accessories like kayaks or bikes, maybe even a basket up on your roof. If you do plan on carrying something like a larger fishing kayak or maybe even a tent, I would maybe look into the Exposed Rack systems. Those are also going to install in the gutters of your Jeep. There are gonna require tools, but they come with everything you need and they are gonna be a bit more rugged. The slot on the Exposed Rack system also allow for different accessories, so you can install a kayak carrier or load stops. So if that's something you're interested in in building out a whole system for your roof that's maybe gonna stay on pretty much full time, I'd look into that. But if you want something that's more temporary, easy to take on and off when you need it this is definitely the way to go. And that'll do it for our look at and installation of this Thule Roof Rack System on our 2021 Jeep Gladiator. Thanks for watching..
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