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This aerodynamic, flush-mount roof rack lets you carry gear and cargo on your vehicle while maintaining a clean, factory look. Crossbars work with channel-mount and clamp-on accessories. Installs on your vehicle's naked roof.
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Specs:
Alternate Instructions
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Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hi, Matt with etrailer. If you have a 2025 Ram 1500 and you're looking for something that's gonna help you carry those extra long items 'cause maybe your bed's preoccupied with something else, maybe you can't fit those extra long items in your bed, you're looking for something that's gonna be able to accommodate to a lot of roofs or make sure you have as level as a surface as possible, then the Yakima FX Baseline Roof Rack's gonna be a great option for ya, so let's check it out. What I like about roof racks are they're gonna allow you to carry those items that you can't fit in your bed, like I was saying. So some things that really think about would be lumber, ladders or kayaks. Well, you do have a lot of space in your bed. Typically you won't be able to really neatly place those items in.
The same thing is gonna apply if you have some type of hitch carrier, those longer items won't fit back there, so the next thing would be a trailer. Trailers are really nice, but that's gonna make you use your hitch, so if you wanna use a hitch for something else. Or if you don't want that larger footprint because a trailer is gonna add a lot of extra length to your truck and it's gonna be a little bit more harder to maneuver some tighter areas with. What's nice about the roof rack is, it keeps all your gear in one footprint so you don't have to worry about any other space behind you being taken up. And I also like also pairing it with a ladder rack if you want to maximize the area above your roof.
But let's kind of focus on the one that we have today, and what's nice about this Yakima Roof Rack, is it's gonna have a pretty clean finish to the end of it and it's gonna be very adjustable to fit whatever your needs for leveling out your roof. So let's check out the components. So there's gonna be two parts of it. We're gonna have the crossbar and the tower in one piece, and then we're gonna have a fit kit in a second piece. So really looking at the crossbar up top, we're gonna have this arrow shape to it and that arrow shape's gonna help it be more aerodynamic to help reduce that wind noise.
What's also gonna help reduce wind noise is gonna be this rubber strip, or weather strip at the very top of it. This is protecting our T-channel, and what's nice about that is it's gonna keep out any additional debris like water, dirt or any type of grime. And what that primarily is used for is if you have any sort of T-channel accessories 'cause most clamp-on accessories will work with this, but what's nice about a T-channel accessory is it's gonna help you get the maximum area out of your crossbar, and sometimes if you have more bulky clamps, you might not have a lot of space underneath. Using a T-channel's gonna be a simple way of installing something. Now, we are gonna have this tower, and I'm a big fan of this tower because it's built on to our crossbar so you don't have to worry about any additional parts.
And we're gonna have this end cap, and you're gonna notice the back of this, we have a whole lot going on and that's what's getting us that adjustable fit we have today. You can change how everything's tilted, the angle of your crossbar. It's a really complex system and Yakima breaks it down in a way that's easy for us to install too. Now we are gonna have this plastic core. You can actually get that traded out at some point. You can find one of these on our website and it's just gonna be a metal-locking core too, and what's nice about Yakima, you can get this key to lock with any of your other Yakima accessories as well. And with this, you can really see how we're grabbing onto our fit kit, but let me put this end cap back into place. I do like the end caps too because since we don't have to deal with any type of cores or any extra buttons on this, it really gives us a clean finish on top of our roof. (end cap clicking) If you wanna take a closer look at that fit kit, I'm gonna open up my door and we can see what parts are doing what. So we're gonna have that clamp that grabs onto the tower, and this is grabbing onto the gutter of your roof, or your truck. What I like about this is this is a really flush design we're getting right here. We also have this rubber coating underneath so we don't scratch anything. Now what I'm not a big fan of though is how sitting down with our base up here. We do have a little bit of a gap right here. We're not really contouring to the top of our roof. It's still a good fit. I've shaken it a bunch of times and it's very secure. It's not as good as some other options I've seen and that's kind of a disappointment for me because everything about this is a really clean finish. The only thing that isn't is just how that fit kit sits up top. But now we can get a few measurements and see how this is living up here. So the first one I'm gonna get is gonna be that crossbar spread, and this one's looking pretty good so far. So we're actually handling a 32" spread, which is great. That's gonna give you a lot of room to put on a lot of different types of accessories. It's nice that we have that much room too, especially for those longer items. Now this is gonna be at a fixed point so you won't be able to move it. You could in theory slide it over a little bit, but I don't recommend it because it could affect your fit. Now we are gonna have some space underneath our bars. That's not gonna be very much though. That's gonna be about 2 1/2". So if you have any larger clamps like I was talking about earlier, you might not have a lot of room underneath there to really work with them. That's why that T-channel like I was talking about earlier is really important for this, and that actually leads me into the overall height. The overall height of these is gonna be pretty low profile. That's gonna be about 4". That's not bad at all. What I'd recommend doing though is just taking the total height of the vehicle, crossbars and whatever is on top of that, but make sure you can make those low clearance areas, and stop and really think about what would be a garage. Now something else to think about too is how that height is gonna work with any other accessories you might have on your vehicle. Like we we inchesre saying earlier, you can use this in tandem with a ladder rack to make more of a platform. The reason why you might wanna do that is if you like going overlanding, so if you want to put a lot of those larger items up here, especially anything like a tent, having more real estate to work with, it's gonna help you have a lot. And this is gonna have a pretty good weight capacity. Now what's gonna be a limiting factor is probably gonna be your roof, so I just recommend checking that just so you don't overload it and damage it. And something else to think about is we're not gonna have any overhang on these bars since it's gonna be a flush kit, so that kind of gives us more of a clean aesthetic over overall, but if you have anything like ski carriers, that's gonna be a little bit more difficult to reach since they don't have to sit inside of those towers. Now in my opinion, I think this is a great option if you are looking for that cleaner look overall on top of your roof and you're really just looking for items like boxes or there's longer things to sit in the center. Now, if you're looking for an easier installation and overall just a better way of grabbing onto your roof, then I'd recommend the Rhino Rack Roof Rack because that only takes two bolts to tighten down to keep it on your roof and I really like the way it contours to the edge too. But it's really gonna come down to is you want an easier installation, or if you want something that's gonna have just a cleaner look of your crossbars. So if you are curious to see what this installation's gonna look like, just stay tuned and we'll walk you through the process. To begin our installation, I like to lay everything out. You also probably notice I have my front crossbar already installed. It's going the same process for either one. Now there will be a few tweaks to the adjustments for each one, but I'll talk about that near the end. You'll notice I'm gonna have my crossbar right in front of me, and then we're gonna have the base, and the clamp next to that. I have to keep everything kind of organized to their relative sides. And then you're gonna have this included tool. It's gonna be an Allen key with this torque device on the back of it. And what I recommend grabbing is a tape measure so you can make sure everything's even, and I like to grab some painters tape, just mark out some locations. The first thing I'm gonna do is actually just take this rubber base off this plastic base here. The reason why I'm doing that is 'cause when they flip this over, these bars already have a plastic base installed. I could simply take 'em off if I really wanted to, but these ones are gonna be a little bit different than the ones that come with your fit kit. As you can see, that channel inside of here is a little bit wider, so these ones that come with your fit kit won't fit on there. So we're gonna use the ones that come standard with these crossbars and we're just gonna put that rubber pad in place, just lining it up with the contours of that. Once you have this side completed, you just repeat that same process on the other side. From this point we're gonna be utilizing our instructions to get certain measurements, so the first one we're gonna be getting is gonna be your M1 or your M3 measurement. That's gonna depend if you get on your front or rear crossbar. Right now I'm on the rear crossbar. That's gonna be the same process of getting either one, so reference your instructions for that number, and that's basically gonna be a distance from one tower. You're gonna have a line right here that marks out that location that you measure from. You see it says M1/M3. You're gonna measure from there, all the way over to the other side, getting that measurement. Another thing I like to do is, so I don't have to reach all the way across, is just go from the center of the crossbar. You'll find that we have an arrow that's pointing right here. I like this arrow pointing away from me because when you set the other pitch and tow, that'll also be specified in your instructions as well. You're gonna wanna make sure that it's facing away from you so you get the accurate adjustment for those. And speaking of that pitch and tow, you are gonna have to loosen up these bolts most likely. These are gonna be the ones you set for your pitch and tow, just these two bolts here, but I also need to loosen them up just so I can adjust where this tower sits so I can get the correct M1 or M2 measurement. And just be sure that you get the same distance from the center of your crossbar on each side for your towers. We can move over to the pitch now and you can reference which setting that has to be on in your instructions. And the way I'm gonna do this is just by really rotating our tower, and there's gonna be three settings, so if the bolt's furthest away from you, that's gonna A, the middle is B, and then closest to you is C. That's why we had to put this crossbar in the right orientation. So what's nice for me, I get to keep this in B, the center position. Once you have that, just make sure you tighten this back down (screwdriver clonking) (bolt clicking) until it clicks into place. Tow's gonna be very similar. We're gonna have position one, two, and three, and I'm gonna keep it in the two position, which is just centered up, so that also makes it pretty easy. And same thing, just make sure we tighten this all the way down. (bolt clicking) Gonna hear it click, and then just make sure you do that same process on the other side. It's not a bad idea just to recheck your measurement of where your tower sits just in case it shifted over some. When all your settings have been adjusted and secured down, we can put this on top of the roof. And you wanna make sure this is the right orientation when you do that, so we will have a thinner side. We want that to face behind us. And then we will have a thicker side, which is gonna face in front of us. Once you've done that, we're just gonna roughly place this on our roof. This doesn't have to be perfect. We're just kind of getting more of an idea of where or how this is gonna look, and if we need to adjust it, we can do that afterwards. The way we're gonna find out if this is gonna be in the right spot or not is reference your instructions, so for your front crossbars, you're gonna use the M2 measurement, which is gonna be the distance from the top of your windshield to the very front of this foot on your front crossbar. Make sure you do that on both sides. And then for your M4 measurement, that's gonna be the distance from the center of your front crossbar, to the center of your rear crossbar, and you adjust that to fit the right spot. You also wanna make sure you do that on both sides as well just so everything's squared. At this point, we really just wanna check that we do have a good fit on top of our roof. So we take a closer look at this foot or this base we have on our fit kit. You'll notice that this is hanging over quite a bit. Now this isn't too bad, I already checked, it's even on both ends, but I would prefer if this was in just a tad bit more. I do like to have some of that base still on this edge here, just to give it more stability 'cause I've tried shifting over too far where the edge sits at this point, but then it gives us a weird fit so I think just having a little bit of that edge of their base here is gonna help us a lot. An easy way to adjust your roof rack is simply to just put some masking tape or some painters tape on top, marking where that base is sitting on top of your roof, and taking it off, loosening up those pitch and tow bolts, bringing it in or out some and fit whatever your measurement is, and then putting it back up to see how it looks. And I can already tell the way it's sitting up there now is much better than before. You can take this painters tape off if you like now and we can start installing these clamps. So these clamps are pretty straightforward or there's not too much to 'em. I'm just gonna open up my door and come over here and then open up this access door. Now if I try to do this right off the bat, a lot of times this will be locked into place, so I'll have to make sure I grab a flathead screwdriver. Once you have this opened up, I'm gonna point out a few of the bolts we have inside of here. So we're gonna have two up top, this that's kind of hard to see. That's gonna be your swing bolt. The one right next to it, that's gonna be your drive bolt. And we're gonna grab our clamp, make sure we have that opening up and this clamp facing inwards. We're gonna lift up on that drive bolt, push this clamp into place until it grabs onto the hook on the drive bolt. You can try pulling on it and make sure it's secure. Now, a lot of times you'll have to adjust this some because we try to get this to wrap around a gutter, it doesn't have enough room, so I'm just gonna loosen this up a bit. Just loosening up our drive bolt until we clear that gutter there. And once I've done that, I'm just gonna come over to the swing bolt and tighten this down. You can see this is moving downwards so it sits more flush to our truck. I'm really just looking for it to have just a little bit of resistance at this point against the truck, and then I'm gonna go back to the drive bolt and tighten this until we just get a tiny little bit of resistance here too. Once you've completed this, you're gonna just do that same step on the other side. Then you're just gonna go back and forth, tighten them slowly on either side because if you tighten one side too much at one point, it's gonna give you an uneven fit and it's gonna pull too much, which won't lead to a very secure fit on our roof. The way you would tell if this is completely tightened down is when you're doing this, you'll eventually find a lot of resistance (bolt clicking) and you hear that click. Just make sure you hear the click on both that swing and drive bolt, (bolt clicking) and make sure you have it on both sides too. Afterwards, you can close that access door, make sure you lock it up, and then throw on this end cap. Now, this end cap can be a little bit tricky. You just gotta make sure you line up all the prongs. Then afterwards, I have to give mine a good shake test, make sure it's not gonna shift or go anywhere. Mine feels pretty good. And once you have this done, then you load it up with whatever gear you have (door slamming) and take it out for a ride. That's just a look at the Yakima FX Roof Rack on top of our 2025 Ram 1500. I'm Matt. Thanks for watching.
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