Yakima Roof Rack Review - 2021 Mazda CX-5
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Review of the Yakima Roof Rack on a 2021 Mazda CX-5
What's up, everybody Adam here, with etrailer. Today, we're taking a look at the Yakima CoreBar Roof Rack System on our 2021 Mazda CX-5. If you have a naked roof on your Mazda CX-5, you have options to put a roof rack on here. I like Yakima, just cause it looks good, but this is gonna allow us to get a lot of our contents, whenever we're going on trips or whatever, up and onto our roof. So, everybody's a little bit more comfy in there, especially with the kiddos. Just having more space is always better.
So we can put kayaks up on here, we can put a cargo carrier up here, we can put some bike racks up on here as well. There's a lot of different stuff that we have here at etrailer, and having a roof rack on your vehicle just enables you to bring more stuff to wherever you're going. We're using the CoreBars right now. So, these are gonna be an upgrade from the round bars and the square bars, but it is gonna be a downgrade from some of the other aero bars that have T-slots on top. T-slots, it really isn't a necessity if you wanna maybe get half an inch, maybe an inch lower height whenever you put on your accessories, that's where the T-slots really shine.
But honestly, if you have any other wraparound accessories, this is gonna work. These are gonna be aerodynamic, so it kinda looks like an airplane wing, smaller in the back, thicker in the front. So, this is gonna kinda keep that road noise down a little bit. When it comes to the height of the actual bar, it's gonna be about 3 1/4 inches from our roof to the bottom of the bar. And to the very top of the bar, we're only adding about 4 1/4 inches to the height of our roof.
We opened up this sun roof, and it doesn't have any clearance issues, so you don't have to worry about that. So, you're not really disabling your vehicle from doing anything. Depending on what you plan on putting up on your roof, just be mindful that this roof rack system is gonna have a max capacity of 220 pounds. So just, it's something to think about, you don't wanna overload your roof. Another thing, if you are trying to do the Thule Hullavator, we're only gonna have about two inches from the tower out to the end.
So, this isn't gonna be a roof rack we can use the Hullavator with. I'm just a fan of Yakima. I may be biased. I just think they look the best, and the install wasn't really that bad. If there was a roof rack that's gonna be a little bit easier to install, It's gonna be your SeaSuckers for your naked roofs. It doesn't look as good, I can tell you that, but also it's just a lot more height added. So, I think this has a good balance. It's high enough to where we can use our sunroof, and it looks good. And that's kinda what it's all about. I don't wanna put something up there that's kind of an eyesore. So, if you wanna see how the install goes, stick around, we're gonna show you. Be sure to check your instructions. One, there's gonna be a measurement from the corner of our windshield up to the center of this foot. So, look in your instructions, and make sure to match that up. Basically, from here to the center of our feet. And then, there's gonna be another adjustment, or measurement, in the instructions. That's gonna tell us how much of a distance from the center of this foot to the center of the back bar. So, make sure to do all that. Take your measurements, make sure it's nice and right. And then, we can proceed with the back bar. Pretty much all we got to do is kinda flip this over. We're gonna take our foot, and there's this little door right here. We're gonna slide this out, and that's basically gonna give us access to this bolt, which controls this. So, that's where we're gonna put it in. We wanna make sure that the foot's gonna be facing out. So go ahead, and set it down on top of that. Take your tool, screw it in, once it gets pretty tight. We already kinda measured the width of our roof at the desired spacing. So, kinda match that up and then tighten it down. And with this tool, what's nice about it is it's gonna start to click whenever we have it torqued down to the right setting. So, you don't really have to worry about that. And we'll do the same exact thing for the other side. Now for the foot pad, we wanna make sure that this arrow is gonna be facing out. So place it like this, the little channel's here, and you just got to use a little bit of muscle to pop it into place. Once it's good, we'll do the same exact thing on the other side. Now go ahead and open up your doors, and we can set this down and get it positioned nice and center on our roof. We have a little notch right there. We're gonna fit it into that little gutter, and make sure it's nice and straight. Be a nice time to take a measuring tape out and measure from center to center, to make sure it's good on both sides. Open up this little flap. We're gonna take our fit kit, it's gonna slide right in there. So, this little thing has a hook on it, it's gonna connect onto it, and then we're gonna put it in to jam and tighten it up. I like to kinda tighten it up a little bit on one side, go to the other side, tighten that up, and kinda go back and forth, just to make sure it's nice and tight. So once you do that, you just wanna hear a little click, and then we know it's torqued down. Then you can close this flap. And then after that, we're pretty much ready to put on the cap. With the caps, they just have these two little hooks on the bottom, they're gonna go right here. So, you just put down first and then click it into place. We don't have locking cores on here now, but if you do wanna get some, you can just grab some whenever you grab the kit, 'cause they don't come with it. And that's basically it. We're ready to throw up whatever accessories you guys wanna put up on top of your Mazda's roof. And that was a look at our Yakima Roof Rack System with the Core Bars, on our 2021 Mazda CX-5..
Info for these parts were:
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Zack K
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Jacob T
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Aidan B
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John S
Test Fit:
Andrew K
Test Fit:
Colin H
Test Fit:
Hayden R
Test Fit:
Adam E
Video Edited:
Dustin K
Video Edited:
Chris R
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