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Yakima EasyRider Trailer with SkyRise HD Tent Review

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Review of the Yakima EasyRider Trailer with SkyRise HD Tent


Hey guys today we're going to be taking a look at the Yakima EasyRider trailer with the Yakima SkyRise tent. So it's a kitted system. You're going to be getting the trailer, the tent, front stabilizers, and wheel chalks.The tent itself mounts to the trailers load bars. Not only is it designed to work with this trailer, but it'll also work with your vehicle's roof rack system. The trailer offers two storage levels. On the top, we've got our tent of course.

On the bottom, we can carry larger items like two kayaks, paddle boards, surfboards, cargo boxes, and even cargo baskets.Now right off the bat, this trailer can be delivered right to your doorstep in just a few boxes. It's also very easy to assemble. Like most utility trailers, it's going to connect to your two inch ball. Which is nice because that's a common size. It includes safety chains and trailer wiring, so we can remain safe and legal on the road.Now you'll notice that the tongue is extra long.

It's actually 80 inches from the trailer to the end of the coupler. This is so we can carry boats up to 19 feet. It's actually collapsible so we can stow it easier. We'll show you this later.I've gone ahead and take off the gear, that way you can get a better look. As you can see it has a tubular design.

The whole thing is made out of aluminum. It's extremely lightweight. With it being aluminum, we don't need to worry about any rust or corrosion. We can use it to help us get our boats into the water.You saw how we had it set up. We had two kayaks on bottom, the rest of our gear was up top.

On the bottom, the cross members are fixed. This is ideal for your heavier, larger, or longer equipment. The load bars up top are adjustable along the rails. These are ideal for carrying your bike racks, your kayak carriers, cargo baskets, and other accessories.Now the load bars themselves are going to work with your standard clamp on accessories as well as those T slot accessories. You can see here after I raise up that rubber stripping, it's going to reveal that channel. All we have to do is remove or trim that rubber strip around those accessories and it'll give you a nice clean look. Now the load bars here at the end also have a tie down loop for securing our gear.Now I mentioned that the load bars are adjustable. To do so, you can take the included Allen key, loosen up the bolt underneath and adjust them along the rails. You'll want to set these up to where they'll work best with your accessories. The maximum cross bar spread we can have is 60 inches.It features an axleless suspension with coil overs. Two control arms are attached to the frame for a smooth ride. I mentioned that it . trailer wiring, it's actually a standard four pole connection. The trailer features an amber side marker on each side up front, a red side marker in the rear, and two taillights. On the driver's side, it features a license plate light and a license plate bracket. All of the lights are LED. Here on the outside we have about a 21 and 1/2 inch diameter tire on a 12 inch premium aluminum wheel. It is black in color. All of this is covered by a plastic fender, which is going to prevent debris, mud or water from splashing up over our trailer.When you're ready to disconnect from your towed vehicle, the kickstand jack is going to prevent us from damaging our coupler. And the large plastic handle is going to allow us to easily maneuver our trailer to our location to set up. Once we've got our trailer disconnected and out of the way, maybe we've got our tent set up. Now would be a good time to fold that tongue out of the way, that way no one's tripping over it. It's very easy to do. We'll remove the clip and pin. Pull out the entire pin. And then we can just rotate it in. Note that when the stabilizer jacks are installed, you would not be able to fully rotate your tongue underneath your trailer. So it will be slightly out a bit, as you can see.That folded tongue is also going to come in handy when stowing your utility trailer in your garage. You see we don't have to worry about stepping over it. We have it folded to the side, it's out of the way. It's going to take up less room. Now I don't even need to remove all of my accessories for my trailer. I can leave them in place for next time.Now if you do take advantage of that folding tongue, I recommend that you do place your jack closest to the trailer. We've got that set up here and with the SkyRise tent stability jacks installed, you will not be able to fold that tongue all the way in to your trailer.Now we'll give you some dimensions. These may come in handy when you're stowing your trailer. The whole thing is about 14 and 1/2 feet long, 79 and 3/4 of an inch wide, and about 41 and 1/4 inches tall. Because it's a utility trailer, you might be tempted to completely load it up. You do however want to stay within the 500 pound weight capacity and make sure that's all distributed evenly throughout the trailer. That way it remains safe throughout our travel. Now let's check out the SkyRise tent.Now the attached ladder is going to allow us to access our tent. It also supports our tent when folded out, that way when we're inside and we're putting weight down, it's going to help prop up this side of the tent. Now it's made out of aluminum, so we don't need to worry about any rust or corrosion. And it's also adjustable for various heights of vehicles. So whether we're using a lifted truck or a lifted SUV, it's going to work out just fine. It's going to be right around that eight foot range that'll extend out to, so more than enough.Going to open up our first window here and we've got a screen. That way we can enjoy that fresh air with it open. In order to leave it open, you can roll up that front window and attach it to the anchors at the top. Now this tent is pretty comparable to other tents out there. And what I mean is, it features more than just one vented window throughout the tent. We'll show you more of those when we get inside the tent. What I would like to say is that the material is really heavy duty. We don't need to worry about the wind causing any damage. It's going to hold up very well. To get through the second vent, just unzip it as you did the front flap. This one you can roll up just as easy.Here on the inside, it's pretty spacious. Let's open up the rest of the windows and let in a little bit more light. We've got two on the side, one behind us, and two on the roof. And these two are vented so we can feel that fresh air. With everything opened up, we can see a bit better. Let's point out some of the cool features. First off this tent comes with a two and a half inch thick foam mattress. A lot of tents don't come with mattresses, this one does. So we don't need to worry about picking up anything extra. It's easily removable, that way we can clean it. It extends wall to wall. It's going to be more than enough room for three people.Here on the side it features three support rods. Now these extend up and over to the other side. They are made out of aluminum. Again, we don't need to worry about any rust or corrosion. These are permanently installed. They're already pre-tightened. We don't need to worry about putting anything together. We don't need to worry about any elastic cords. This is all what allows our tent to be nice and tight when folded out. In each corner features a pocket to help keep our smaller items organized. Things like our wallet, keys, cell phone, items like that. The elastic cord on top is going to help it keep tight to the tent, that way nothing can fall out.Now the whole tent is made with a weather resistant fabric with a waterproof coating. But it is not 100 percent waterproof. If you're going to be caught in stormy weather or a huge downpour, I recommend installing the included rain fly. With the rain fly installed, you can see that it covers the entire tent. It includes flexible metal rods, that's going to help pull it out side to side, prevent that water from pooling on top. This way it can just run off the side and it's not going to run into your tent. It's actually going to act as a nice windbreaker and prevent that window from just going straight into your tent. This is going to help slow it down. It's going to be especially great for when you still want your tent vented.Here on the inside, you can see that it too features support rods. It has three to help keep that bend over the top of our tent. It's also going to add support. Also throughout the inside, it features buckles. This is going to help keep that rain fly attached to our tent and keep it nice and stable throughout our adventure. I do recommend that if you're going to be using the rain fly, it can act like a sail. I would use the included ropes and stakes. It's just going to prevent the SkyRise from lifting up when we're not inside of it.Here on the inside of the tent you can actually see the rain fly in action. You can hear it, you can even see the rain beating off the top. One of my favorite features of the rain fly is that it's not going to interfere with our skylight. You can see we've got a clear window here on each side, that way we can still enjoy that light and our view. Now we've got a pretty good rain going on right now. The rain fly's doing its job. I can honestly say I'm staying dry. I don't even feel the mist from the rain. If it we're to pick up, and I'd start to feel that, I can always zip up my windows and prevent that from coming inside.Now as you may have noticed, I did have my bike in place on my bike rack earlier. The SkyRise does leave a little bit of room for some accessories on the other side of your roof rack system, depending on your vehicle of course. But with the rain fly installed, I did have to remove that. So just keep in mind you may have to remove your accessories when folding out your tent or when using your rain fly.Here's a closer look at one of those flexible metal rods I was telling you about. You can see how it's actually bending outward and pushing that rain fly out, preventing any of that rain from coming inside the tent. Here's a shot at one of the rain fly support rods and how it installs into the SkyRise tent. You can see how it feeds into a pocket and then a buckle keeps it from coming out.Now's a good time to talk about how it can be mounted to our vehicle. So depending on our vehicle, we can have it fold out to either side or over our vehicle. We opted to have it folded out the side, that way we can easily access our tent. Now like I said, it's going to mount to your roof rack system. So you'll need to be sure you have one of these. If you don't have one, you can find one here at etrailer.com. Just follow our vehicle fit guide. Now it's going to work with your round, square, aero, or elliptical in most factory roof rack systems. You can see that it is a clamp on system. It'll also work with round bars with the included adapters.Now when you get your SkyRise tent, in the kit you're going to get the mounts here that are mounted to the underside. Depending on how you want your tent to fold out. These can be installed in different directions. So if you do want it to open up front to back over our vehicle, we would turn these support rails the other direction. And if you can see underneath our platform here, we've got a series of dots. These are going to help us line it up, depending on how we want it to be set up on our vehicle's roof.Now the way it clamps on, it's pretty simple. These can be adjusted anywhere along the support rails to work with various cross bar spreads. Once we've got it setup, we just rotate the dial until it's a nice tight fit around the roof rack system. And on the inside here, we've got rubber coating. That way when we take off our SkyRise tent, it doesn't leave behind any scratches or abrasions to our load bars.Now that the rain has finally calmed down, we can wrap it up. Now minus the rain fly, it's all pretty simple to fold in. So let's go ahead and take off the rain fly first. Now of course if it's still slightly raining, I would recommend going in your tent and closing all the windows. That way it doesn't get too wet inside. Now as far as the skylights, we're going to leave these accessible. This is the easiest way to remove the rain fly. We can just simply lift up on those aluminum support rods. Before we start doing that, let's go ahead and remove the metal flexible rods surrounding the rain fly on the outside.When it comes to setting up your rain fly, you just simply reverse your steps. But to uninstall it, we're going to bend it out, pull the hook out and then pull it out of the platform. Now there are eight total. We'll just go around and repeat the same process. Since we're already on the ground, we can undo the buckles in all four corners.With everything done on the outside, we can climb back in the tent and then finally lift up on those supports. Now there are three more buckles to each side right near the support. So we'll need to be sure and undo those. Now like I said, it's way easier to stand up through the skylights, disconnect the buckle and then we can pull out that support. We'll just go around and repeat the same process.With all the buckles disconnected and the rods lifted up, I'm going to go ahead and zip up my windows, and then from the ground we can pull off the rain fly. With everything disconnected on the ground, we can just pull it off, just like we said. I'm going to try to do one rod at a time and just catch it as it comes down.Now the rods are removable from the rain fly. If you'd like to pull them all the way and fold up your rain fly that way, it's up to you. The only thing about the rods though, is that they are all one piece. They do not come apart. Now for the easy part. All we have to do is fold it in. So we'll use the ladder to help us do so.From here, we can just push in on the unlocking tabs on each side and then close it in completely. With your ladder pushed in all the way, we can buckle it and this is going to keep it together. From here we can unroll our protective vinyl cover. Now one thing you want to be sure of is that it's evenly from side to side. You can accidentally push it over. You want to keep it center, that way when we pull it over our tent it connects correctly. So if that happens, no big deal, just readjust it. We'll undo our anchors, let it come down and then we can just toss it over.On the other side, we can continue pulling it over. We want to get the corners first. I do recommend folding down your tent like so. On the bottom, you'll want to fold it up around the corner to reveal that hook and loop. We'll also want to tuck in all of our straps, that way they're not hanging out. Pull that all the way down til the corner meets up. With our corners in position, let's first do our zippers. Want to be sure that these pull all the way down. Make sure that they do not get caught. There we go. And then close up the hook and loop. I'll work my way down, again, just making sure everything's tucked in and folding up that hook and loop, and we want to connect it together.I'm just going to do a little bit, that way I can still zip it on this end. And from here, we'll just connect the rest of the hook and loop surrounding the whole vinyl cover. Once one whole side is done, we can connect our buckles. Now as for the rain fly and the rest of the rods, you can try to stow them within the tent. Although, I wouldn't recommend it because they could tear something upon folding or unfolding.Now I'll give you some dimensions. This will give you a better idea of how big it is and how it's going to sit on your roof. It'll also let you know whether you'll have room for more accessories on your roof. So it's overall length is about 58 inches long. It's 56 inches wide and about 17 inches tall.


Info for this part was:

Employee Andrew K
Video by:
Andrew K
Employee Jacob T
Video Edited:
Jacob T
Employee Hayden R
Installed by:
Hayden R

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