Video Transcript for A Closer Look at the Kuat Grip Ski and Snowboard Carrier on a 2022 Toyota RAV4

How's it going everyone It's Ethan here with etrailer. Today we're going to be taking a look at the Kuat Grip Ski and Snowboard Carrier on our 2022 Toyota RAV4. This ski and snowboard carrier is capable of holding four sets of skis or two boards. But we also have a larger size capable of holding six skis or four boards. Additionally, it comes in this black color, as well as a gray and pearl. But, the standup feature of this carrier system is this sliding tray.

Each as you can see, for ease of loading. So, I'll show you how they pull out and it is somewhat of a taller vehicle, and if you have heavier skis or snowboards, this just makes the loading process that much easier. Just put it on, slide the trays back in and close it down. Loading and unloading is made even easier by easy to push up handles. If you do have larger gloves on in the winter seasons, still easy to push up.

And as they're open, you can see these rubberized teeth that are on both sides, top and bottom, to cushion and keep your gear from sliding around. As we close, you can see it's got a couple different height that it'll ratchet down to. But, even if it does stick at this top height, it won't be coming loose. And close it all the way down, you can lock it and not be able to get your gear out of the carrier. In addition, you can see that there are lock cores on each of the feet of the actual carrier, which will lock the carrier to the rack.

So you can lock your gear and the carrier, and the carrier to the rack to secure everything. The clamps themselves are not entirely tool-free, but they're pretty easy to install. You'll just need the included Alan Key to tighten things down. They work pretty well on our factory bars here. They'll work specifically well on arrow and elliptical bars, like the ones we do have.

But they have a little indentation in the middle for your square and round crossbars, so they should work pretty well on any type of crossbars that are available. Something to consider when you're putting anything on the roof that is a little bit longer, like these skis, is will you get enough clearance to open your hatch In the case of the skis that we have here, we have about a foot of space when all is said and done. But relatively speaking, these are pretty short skis. So, you're going to want to figure out how much length your skis are. And again, we have a foot here, but something to keep in mind for your gear and how you load it up. Just to give you an idea of how much space you're going to be adding to the top of your roof, I'm gonna grab a measurement from the top of our crossbar to the top of the actual carrier. For us, it's about four and three quarters inches from the top of the crossbar to the top of the system. But it does rise a little bit in the back. The grip hinge system does move to accommodate the different sizes of your gear. Additionally, if you get the Kuat Grip 6, it's gonna take up about five more inches of your crossbar. We're already to the point where I don't know if there's any room on the side to actually load up more accessories or not. So, with five more inches, that's gonna take up about the full width of the crossbar. The weight capacity of the actual carrier is 165 pounds. But you have to factor in the weight capacity of your crossbars as well. Typically, the carrier's gonna be the lower of those two, but consider which one of those will be lower and use that to know how much you can actually store on the carrier itself. In addition to that, you could see that with the crossbars themselves, they're already gonna be covering the sunroof. But the more gear that you load onto the carrier, the less view you're gonna have outta that as well. Overall, the Kuat Grip is a really premium ski and snowboard carrier. The accessibility features with the sliding tray sets it apart from every other ski and snowboard carrier that we offer. As well as it just looks really nice on our RAV4. If you don't need the bells and whistles that this offers, I'd probably recommend looking into the Yakima FatCat EVO. You get a rise in the back, as well as in a similar aesthetic look. The Kuat Grips themselves are able to work with two track accessories if you wanna get a little bit more clearance that way. But again, like I said, I think they're a really solid roof rack option for our 2022 Toyota RAV4.