Video Transcript for Review of the Landing Pad 13 for Yakima SkyLine and Control Towers

Hi there adventures, today we're gonna be taking a look at Yakima's line of landing pads for their SkyLine Towers. And this is what our pads are gonna look like when they're installed. You can see how they attach directly to our factory raised rails, and they're gonna give us an attachment point so we can install a Yakima roof rack on here easily. And this really nice that you've got an option like this because some people just don't like having their roof rack on all the time, 'cause adding a roof rack does cause extra drag which can cause extra noise; wind noise and various things that you may not want all the time when you're driving around. You might just want this only for when you're using it, when you're going on vacation or different trips. So this is a really quick easy way to be able to take on and off a roof rack and also just a very easy way to get a roof rack installed, because often you have to do a lot of measurements and various things to get a roof rack installed, but this is just goes to factory attachment points, so most of the work is done for you.

Yakima's landing pads are designed to fix directly to the raised side rails and fixed points on your vehicle, giving you an easy attachment point to install a Yakima roof rack. The landing pad is designed to attach directly to Yakima's SkyLine Towers and then you can choose the rails that you want. We're showing off the JetStream rails today. The landing pads are gonna be custom-fit for your Vehicle, so you wanna make sure you use our Fit Guide to ensure you get the correct ones that will attach directly to yours. And I think one of the coolest parts about the landing pads here is how quickly you can remove the SkyLine Towers and rails from them, 'cause maybe you don't like the noise; the wind noise, and some other things that happens by putting a roof rack on your vehicle.

It's as easy as pulling out on the cover, and look at that, it lifts right off. We just pull the cover out on the other side and we can just set these in our garage. And we're ready to use them again, it just drop down in place, the cover pushes back on and that locks it in, and they're not going anywhere. Now one of the things I do recommend is switching out the cover here with a lock. You can get lock kits from Yakima here at etrailer, that will work directly with this and that will protect your investment.

That way nobody can just come up and you saw how easy and quickly it was for me to take this off. So it could work away at a potential camp site or something, so I highly recommend those. I also like that these go directly to a factory attachment point, 'cause even if you've got a factory roof rack, maybe that one's damaged, or maybe it doesn't work with your accessories, because it's just simple bars. This one here has T-slots, you got a lot of different options that you can get on a roof rack with, from Yakima here. So get rid of that old system, whether it's broken or just not working out for you and upgrade to a much better one.

If you have an older set of Yakima Control Towers, those will also attach to the landing pads. Since everything's custom-fit for the vehicle, and its going to fixed mounting points, these are extremely quick and easy to install. You follow along with me, I'll show you how to get it done right now. You'll begin your installation by locating your factory attachment points. Once you find those, you wanna remove the cover, it's gonna be different on every vehicle, but we're just gonna pop the cover off with a screw driver. We now take the hardware that comes in our kit and you'll notice that they're labeled. We've got a B on this one and an A on this one. So with the passenger side, the B is the front one, and A is the rear one; and on the driver side it flops, the A is gonna be the front one, and the B is gonna be the rear one. When you put them in place, you wanna be able to see, read the Yakima, so it's kinda like this, then it would just go just like that. So, we're gonna put our B up by the front one, and we're gonna take the A here at the back, and you'll see there is a hole there, right on top, that's gonna line up with the hole in our landing gear pad, so it's just gonna sit into place on there just like that. You'll then have the upper attachment point here, this is going to sit right on top and you also wanna be able to read the Yakima logo. We can then open it up, you might wanna open it up first, just 'cause it's a little stiff. And you'll see there's a hole in this component as well. We'll take the hardware that comes in our kit, we wanna put one of the washers on it, slide it down in there, and then we can use the included tool to run it right down into the top. We'll then repeat this for this three remaining locations. There's a little bit of lock tight that comes on your bolt, so if it feels a little stiff at a certain point, just be careful and just go faster, you can see here it gets stiff towards the end 'cause of that. Now in order to attach a roof rack to your new landing gear rails, you are gonna need Yakima SkyLine Towers. And then you can use whatever crossbars that you want with this. Now in order to get the rails attached to your SkyLine Feet, you need to use the hardware that comes included with your Yakima bars. It's gonna be different depending on the bars that you use. We're using the JetStream bars, so this is what our hardware is gonna look like. It's got a plastic piece and then this will insert in there, so it will slide into the bar. But this does vary depending on whatever your choice is. If you wanna refer to your instructions so you can get this properly attached, based on the bars that you had chosen. So now you can take your prepared bars, you need to have the cover open 'cause that's what's gonna lock it to our attachment point, and then we're just gonna set it in place. And you may need to adjust it, once we get it on there, we're gonna go ahead and just push that cover up, that's gonna insure this side stays on. And then we can go to our other side, and now we're just gonna even out our bar. And there's actually numbers written on the bottom, so you can just make it, so the numbers on the bottom are at the exact same point on each side. Then just open your cover back up once you've got them centered and tighten them down. There we go, we wanna have three clicks on our device so we get the proper torque. There we go. Close the cover back up and that's gonna lock it in place, and we'll just repeat that on the other side, and then install our front rail the same way. Next we're gonna take the rubber strips that come with your bars, and this is really just only for certain type of bars, you may or may not need to do this depending on the rails that you chose. But if you do have bars like this, we'll then put our strip in place. Wanna make sure that we've got it all the way up against our foot pad on the inside here. And then we're gonna run it all the way across to the other side and then cut it to length. And with the little bit of excess that you've got, you can use this as well to cover up the outside. And we're just gonna repeat this at each attachment point here, you got plenty of excess so if you don't make a great cut, you can always make another. And then we'll just repeat for each bar. And that completes our look at Yakima's line of landing pads for the SkyLine Towers..