Video Transcript for Thule WingBar Evo Rain Gutter Roof Rack DIY Installation - 2025 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited

Hello, neighbor, this is Curt with etrailer, and today we're taking a look at the Thule WingBar Evo roof rack on our 2025 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. Now a roof rack is an excellent way to carry the extra cargo with you that you either don't want in the vehicle with you or it simply doesn't fit in there. The other cargo options would include hitch options, so something like a small trailer or a hitch cargo carrier. However, those kind of things can make it difficult because they just add so much length and give the car so much bigger of a footprint. Being able to store things up on the roof tends to be a bit more convenient of a way for a lot of people to carry their things. So let's go ahead and take a look at this roof rack.

So the Thule WingBar is an aero bar, meaning it has this kind of elliptical type of shape. It's, you know, kind of a blade shape here in the back, a little wider in the front. And the whole purpose of a bar like this is to really reduce a lot of that vibration and, you know, cut down on the wind resistance, making for a quieter ride than, say, you would get out of a square or round bar. It's going to be able to, you know, be used with your clamp-mounted accessories as well as your T-track accessories, which are accessible right here through the end cap. And you'd be able to push it right through that weather stripping up there.

They're gonna give you a 165 pound weight capacity. However, you always wanna double-check your owner's manual to see what your rooftop capacity is. If your rooftop capacity is lower than the crossbar capacity, then that's the the weight limit for the roof of your Wrangler. Now as far as your crossbar setup goes, this is a gutter mount, which means it's gonna be using the gutters up here on your hard top, and it really gives us a lot of freedom to be able to move our bars kind of wherever we want. Now today we have a two-bar setup.

I've got one bar here on the front section and one on the back, leaving me room for a third. There are a lot of Wrangler Unlimited owners that because they have all this roof space up here, it's so wide and so flat up there, they like to get a third bar up there for support for some of those bigger items that they might want to carry. But in our two-bar setup here, we put one on the front, one on the back, I can easily take both of these bars and move them both back here to the back section if I wanted to. We really have a lot of freedom to be able to move it around. But as far as our setup for today goes, let's get up on the roof, take some measurements, and see how it's fitting on our Wrangler Unlimited.

So the first thing that we want to take a look at is going to be our crossbar spread. Now, the crossbar spread is important because every rooftop accessory that you're gonna come across has a minimum and a maximum crossbar spread. Now most of the ones are the ones that I think are really the most common tend to be between 26 and 36 inches. So we've got a 30-inch setup here. That should be enough to accommodate just about any rooftop accessory that you want. So we set that up deliberately because of that. And again, it's also a 30-inch bar setup, I think leaves us room to go 30 inches back for a third bar if we wanted to. When we set it up with a 32-inch spread, that back bar was really a bit too close to the end of the gutter. So we shortened it to 30 inches to accommodate for that third bar setup if we want it. Now the other thing that we're gonna take a look at is just how much height is this giving to the vehicle. And 3 3/4 inches thereabouts of vehicle height this is gonna add. So if you're trying to figure out what your roof clearance is, if you're coming up on something that might be a little lower hanging, if you know the height of your accessory, add that 3 1/2 inches to it and that's gonna be your vehicle height. The other measurement that we want to take a look at is how much clearance we have under the bar. And we've got about 2 1/2 inches of clearance underneath the bar, and that should be enough for just about any clamp mount system to be able to reach under here and grab onto it. You shouldn't get any interference from the roof in that regard. The other thing while we're up here and have a good visual of it is that these are 60-inch crossbars, and you need every bit of that 60 inches to get all the way across the roof of the Wrangler Unlimited. But that 60 inches for clamp-mounted, 60 inches here for your T-track. However, when it comes to the clamp-mounted, this would be the only section here that would be unusable 'cause you couldn't get it around. We even have a little bit of overhang here to work with. On our front bar, we've got 3 1/2 inches. On our second bar, it goes down to three inches, and that's because it tapers slightly as we get to the back of the vehicle. So if you added a third bar on here, it would probably have a little bit, you know, more overhang as we go back because of it tapering in. So just to add one more thing, we'll talk a little bit about security of our roof rack. Out of the box, there is going to be this little section on our knob, and that can be used with a flathead screwdriver. What it'll end up doing is putting your knob into a bit of a free spin, and therefore no one technically can loosen it up and take it off. However, anybody that's walking around with a flathead screwdriver or a nickel or something is gonna be able to do that. So my suggestion would be that you take advantage of Thule's One-Key system. Thule's One-Key system is essentially lock cores and matching keys that you can get and get 'em keyed alike to all of your Thule accessories. That's really gonna help you out with organization if you have multiple things like a bike rack, a roof box, a kayak carrier, anything else from Thule that has a lock on it, you'll be able to get 'em all keyed alike and basically knock that all down to one key. Installation of these crossbars is very, very simple. So follow along, we'll show you exactly how we got these up on our Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. So we'll begin our installation with our tower assembly. Our end product is going to look like this. These are the components that will make that up. So the first thing we'll want to do is take our tower here and we've got this rubber pad. Now you'll notice that it has kind of a bulb look to it right here in the back. This should be facing that side here. So it's gonna go on just like this. Slip it in, gotta give it a little bit of a stretch here, and get it in over the other side as well, and get it straightened out on there. It'll end up being on there just like that. The next thing we'll do is we'll take this, it's almost kind of like a triangular shaped piece. This is gonna go on here, just like this, and we'll need to snap it down, just like so. So the next thing we'll do is we'll take our bolt here and we're gonna run it right through the back of our tower, just like so. The next thing we'll do is we'll take our clamp. That will go over, just like so. Our flat washer, and finally, our knob attachment. Now I'm gonna leave this relatively loose. As this knob tightens down, it's gonna tighten down on not only our clamp, but also our piece up here that's going to attach to the bar. So we're gonna leave it a little loose for now. So next we're gonna take our crossbar here. And after we put in the weather stripping, just keep in mind when you're doing the weather stripping, that the side with the arrows is gonna be facing the front of the bar, which is going to be the thicker end of the bar. But to attach our towers, we're gonna turn it over, we're gonna remove our end cap, and what we're gonna end up doing is guiding this square piece through this T-slide here. Now it's a thick piece. It can be a little bit tricky. But as long as you left the knob loose enough, we should be able to work it in pretty well. Try to loosen it just a hair, and there it goes on, just like so. Once it's on, we can replace our end cap, and repeat the process for the other tower. So with everything assembled, we're gonna come up to our roof and we're gonna pick a spot that's gonna be a good crossbar spread, and we're just gonna kind of gently get it across here. We're gonna make sure that the clamp remains on the outside of the gutters, and that that rubber portion that we put on is on the inside of the gutters. Once we get this placed to the crossbar spread that we want and we've got a good location up here, one of the things I want to note, you should definitely avoid being too close to that break in the roof up top here. I'm particularly talking about the front bar because that front section is kind of so close, I guess. The idea is really to keep it away from this edge right here. But we've got our second bar in a place where we really like it in relation to the front bar. So before we tighten this down, I'm gonna take a measurement on each side of my overhang. I'm gonna make sure that that's even on both sides. And I'm gonna measure from bar to bar on both sides to make sure that they're perfectly parallel. Once I have that done, I'm able to go ahead and get this tightened down. And what we're gonna end up doing is just hand tightening this down as much as we can and getting it good and snug on there. So once that's done, I'm gonna give it a really good shake test. I'm gonna go ahead and close my door, make sure there's no interference there, which I'm not expecting there to be. And that's it for the installation. So in my opinion, the Thule WingBar Evo is an excellent choice for you and your 2025 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. And if you decide to go with this crossbar system and you're able to use it a few times, please share with us what you think about it in the comments below. We would love to share your experience with other neighbors so they can make the best decision for themselves. Once again, this is Curt with etrailer. Thanks for stopping by.