Carpod Hitch Cargo Carrier Review - 2016 Subaru Outback Wagon
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Review of the Carpod Hitch Cargo Carrier on a 2016 Subaru Outback Wagon
Today on our 2016 Subaru Outback, we're doing a test on the Car Pod, 23 by 47 Walled Cargo Carrier. Now this has been designed to carry up to 450 pounds and it's for use with two inch hitches. The part number on it is M2205. Obviously this carrier stands out as opposed to a lot of the other cargo carriers cause it does offer us full protection around the outside for our items. So even if we're loading up smaller items or several little things that typically wouldn't work well on a cargo carrier, this is kind of gonna fill that void for us. Now the sides themselves are gonna be about 22 inches off of our platform. All the way around there.
Once we've got everything loaded up, they're also gonna provide us with some good attachment points to get everything secured. The floor of the carrier you can see here is a nice large expanded steel. There's plenty of room for dirt and debris to fall down through it if we're using it for that kind of transport. Or it's also gonna give us good support for smaller items once we get them loaded up. Now, the Car Pod is available with a bag designed to fit right inside, seal things up, kind of help keep them out of the weather. And also a locking lid.
So we can really have a very very secure system, place the lid on there, lock it up, we won't have to worry about our things disappearing. Now overall, as far as ground clearance is concerned here in the back we're gonna have about 19 inches. The Car Pod's gonna add about 31 and three quarters of an inch to the back of our Subaru. And if we we're to slide the carrier all the way up to the car, it'd be about two and half inches before it'd make contact right there in the back. Now when it's time to store it, or to tuck everything away, this conveniently folds up against the back side of the car. To do it we're gonna have ball D tent pins that are located in each corner.
A nice little tip is, if you just remove the two here in the back, it actually allows us to lower our gate down for easier loading and unloading. You might want to keep that in mind. Let's continue to go on around. We'll pull out our other two pins located here on the front. Bring our .. you see its a self folding design.
No, we just fold our side panels down, fold our front down, and then finally the back's gonna come up and rest right on there. They also are gonna provide us with this strap, that way we can get everything nice and secure. It's a nice length. It's just about perfect size where you're not gonna be messing with it too much. Just bring that down and around. It's a cam buckle style so you just pass it through. Push down on it, pull it nice and tight and that keeps everything secure. This is also a great opportunity to open up that rear hatch and get stuff in or out of there that we might need. As we open it, the hatch does break over the plane of the carrier, but you'll not have items loaded up on it when you're opening your hatch. You just, it'll come up and it's gonna hit that panel. The exhaust on our Outback here, this is a driver's side outlet, right down here. It's turned downward. Between that and the rise that we get out of our pivoting shank here, not gonna have any worries when transporting heat sensitive materials. To get it as compact as possible we can just pull out the pin with attached clip located there at our pivot point. Rotate this up toward our vehicle. There's a small tab here that's designed to make contact so we don't over-rotate, but we always want to be careful. Then we just replace our pin right down there in the appropriate hole. Just like that we've really really reduced the overall length that we've added here to the car. Looks like now we're gonna be looking at adding really just about 7 inches. A really large cargo carrier only takes up seven inches of room. It's still gonna give us a ground clearance of around 14 and a half inches now. And it looks like the closest point would be about an inch and a half away. You can see with pushing it around, jostling it around, we can't actually get it to go up and make contact with the back of the vehicle. So we should be safe there. And of course, like any cargo carrier, when they're secured with just a pin and a clip, we've got kind of movement and some shake there. We've got several anti-rattle devices available there on our website if you want to stabilize that up, pick one of those up when you order, and you'll have everything you need for a nice stable ride. Now that we've had a good look at that 23 by 47 Car Pod Wald Cargo Carrier, and we've seen how it fits our 2016 Subaru Outback Wagon, let's take a look and see how it performed when they had it out on our test course. Here on our test course we'll start by going through the slalom. This is gonna show us the side to side action. This simulates turning corners or evasively maneuvering. Once we get to the alternating speed bumps, we'll see the twisting action. This will simulate hitting a curb or pothole, or driving over uneven pavement. Once we get to the full speed bumps we'll see the up and down action. This will be just like driving in and out of a parking lot, parking garage, or driveway.
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