2023 Chevrolet Suburban Roof Rack by Thule

Video Transcript for Thule WingBar Evo Roof Rack Installation - 2023 Chevrolet Suburban

Hey, it's Ethan here at etrailer. Today, we're going to be taking a look at showing you how to install the Thule WingBar Evo Roof Rack System on our 2023 Chevrolet Suburban. We are gonna be showing you the black ones, but there are also silver crossbars available if you find that fits your aesthetic a little bit better. If you've got your Suburban fully loaded up with people and you don't have as much room in the back as you might think or maybe you just wanna get some larger items on the roof, maybe some ski and snowboard carriers, maybe some kayaks, roof boxes, baskets, whatever that may be. If you wanna get some larger items up on the roof, a system like this is gonna be a great way to do that. This roof rack system has the crossbars, obviously.

It has these towers and clamps in our fit kit that hold onto our Flush Rail system on our Suburban. So these crossbars are gonna be able to support up to 220 pounds, but there's different weight ratings for the feet and the rails or your roof on your Suburban as well. So make sure you check and find out what all of those are rated for. Take the lowest-rated component. If you're worried about how much usable space you'll actually have on the crossbars, it really is pretty close to 60.

The actual end caps on the crossbars don't take up a ton of space. So you have 58 1/2 inches of actual usable space on top of your crossbars. As you can see, with our 60-inch crossbars, we have a little bit of overhang on the side, which is honestly nice. I don't think it's too much to where it looks too big or is actually going to impact where you're driving 'cause it doesn't actually come further than the side of your vehicle, but we do have, in our case, about 4 inches worth of overhang on this side so you have more room for accessories. If you're curious to know how much height you're adding to the roof from the crossbars, that's gonna be about 3 3/4 inches from the top of your roof to the top of the crossbars.

If you wanna know how much room you have for clamps, it's about 3 1/4 inches underneath. So if you do have clamps, not really gonna have to worry about them making contact with the roof, but if you have some really large clamps or if you're using a ski and snowboard carrier with large bindings, that's a measurement you might wanna consider. The crossbars have this nice aerodynamic shape, which will cut down on some of that wind noise. Granted, anytime you put something on your roof, you'll feel it, but the shape combined with this rubber strip that goes all the way through we'll have to cut down on some of that. The strip will also work to hold your T-track accessories in place and without trimming.

As you can see, if we fold up the front of this end cap here, you'll just slide your accessories through and they'll be held in place. Coming down to the towers now, you can see that there is a plastic lock core, you can upgrade to a metal one if you'd like. They come with the plastic ones included. So if we unlock this, you can take this end cap off. You can see how it protects your hardware and the fit kit. So you won't be able to access that bolt and take the roof rack system off if the end cap is in place. The shape of the crossbars is really gonna help cut down on some of that wind noise when you factor in the rubber strip on top and the metal strip on the bottom. Additionally, most of your accessories clamps should work with that aerodynamic shape as well. We have our crossbars towards the front here, but the nice thing about the Suburban is that the rails go really far way back. The top is pretty rectangular in uniform, so the measurement should stay roughly the same. So if you wanna move the crossbars to accommodate different accessories, you can do that for sure. If you have a sunroof or a moon roof that you don't wanna cover, you can accommodate that. If you have some longer things and you don't want them making contact with your hatch when it opens, they should work with that too. Crossbars are going to hold up to most of what you can throw at it. They're made of a pretty durable aluminum with a nice black powder coat finish, so they're lightweight and they're easy to work with. They're also pretty straightforward to install so you can check out how we did that now. First thing we like to do is to make sure we have everything we're going to need. So starting with our 60-inch crossbar here, we have our two end caps for the actual feet, we have the feet themselves, we have the A-clamps that'll go in the back, pads that'll go in between and the seat clamps that'll go in the front as well as the nuts that'll hold it in place. We have this included tool and we recommend picking up a tape measure 'cause we're gonna have some measurements that we're gonna have to figure out when we install it. The first thing you're likely going to need to do is trim this rubber strip in the middle just a little bit to make it fit. We already have ours all ready and then on the backside, you can see here there is this release for your end caps. They're in there pretty good, but if you push it down, you could pull those out, which will be the next step, removing each of those so that we can slide the feet on. On the tower, there is this little plastic plate here that will fit in the underside of your crossbars, just like that, and we can slide this out to meet it and come up with a measurement that we need. On the underside, again, just taking a closer look at the ruler and measurement. You can see here there are nice built-in measurements for the feet. So once you figure out what that measurement is, you can find the same thing on both sides and then your crossbars will be lined up on your rails. Next, we'll get these A-clamps in place. We'll rotate them around. You'll see these two prongs on the end here. Stick those in to the top foot until that bolt sticks itself out and then we can grab these B-clamps, fit those on, keep that A-clamp in place, or B-pads rather, might've said clamps, they're pads, and then we can get these C-clamps, fit those over this ridge here, again, making sure that that bolt sends out just enough for us to get the last piece, these nuts, and slide this on just enough so that it threads and we have the opening here. We'll tighten it down later. We repeated the process on the other side, so now both of our feet and the clamps are open, ready to install, so let's get the crossbars on. We'll just try to be as gentle as possible. The pads on the bottom should help just guide the far side onto the rails and you can adjust the close side a little bit easier, making sure that the pads are flush, get the other side on flush as well, and now, if you took the time to use the measurements underneath, you might already be lined up. In our case, I'm going to use that tape measure we suggested earlier to get the overhang and try to make sure that that amount is the same on both sides. Once we have the whole system on and flush, we're going to use the tape measure again to measure our crossbar spread. We want to come up with a number that's close to 28 inches. We found that that's sort of just a universally good number for most of your roof rack accessories. So we need to slide this just a little bit over and we need to match the other slide up as well. Now that we're all set up, we can use the provided tool to start to tighten the clamps up. So just fit 'em in and start to tighten. I'm only going to tighten this side to about 50% or so. Go to the other side, come back and forth and tighten them up evenly so that we're not pulling the system towards one way or another, so I'll do that now. Now, we'll tighten the side that we are on at the beginning fully and then you'll be able to hear that tool provided, it has a torque spec built in, so once we get it tightened fully, you'll hear it click just like that to know that you have the desired torque. End cap here, we can put this plastic lock core in. We can fit it right here on the outside of the foot. We can just use a flathead screwdriver to lock it in place and then we can put our end cap back on the crossbars, slide it in, and then you're all installed. Overall, the Thule WingBar Evo Roof Rack System is a really solid option for you if you have a Suburban and you wanna get some larger items onto your roof. I definitely like the weather strip that you don't have to worry too much about. You can just slide your items in and they'll stay in place. I like the aerodynamic shape and the overall build quality. This was just a look at how the Thule WingBar Roof Rack System fits on our 2023 Chevrolet Suburban.