Kayak rack for jeep wrangler hard top

Hey guys, I'm Eric with Extreme Terrain. In this video, we're gonna give you a review and installation of this Rugged Ridge Hard Top Roof Rack for all 2018 and later Jeep Wrangler JL Unlimiteds. Now, this roof rack is really gonna appeal to the JL Unlimited owner out there who wants to add a lot of extra cargo room for their Jeep. Now, we have considerable room in the back of our Jeeps, but if you're going out on a camping trip, or you're loading up the family and the pets and the kids, and you're heading out to the beach, or somewhere else for the weekend, you're gonna need that extra cargo space. And this roof rack from Rugged Ridge is gonna allow you to carry up to an extra 150 pounds of cargo.Now, working with this Rugged Ridge roof rack today, we came to find out that this is a really sturdy unit. It is made from thick, heavy-duty steel that's covered in a nice matte black powder coat that's gonna protect it against weathering and corrosion. And it's really a heavy-duty unit. It's gonna give you 150 pounds of carrying capacity on the roof of your Jeep. Overall, I think this Rugged Ridge design is really an attractive one, especially compared to some of the more tubular baskets you might see out there in the market. This has a nice sleek design and the panels that go on, kind of the floorboards so to speak for this roof rack are flat. It's gonna make it nice and easy to mount cargo up there. There's a lot of cutouts up top here that are gonna make strapping things down very easy.And the other nice thing I like about this design is you have built-in mounting points for lighting on the front end. If you wanna put some cube fog lights up front, it'd be very easy to do. And the gauge of steel that's used in this is thick enough that for you do-it-yourselfers out there that really wanna trick it out, you could very easily drill into this unit and you're not gonna impact the structural integrity of it if you wanna add extra lighting on the sides and the back. Now, Rugged Ridge backs this kit with a five-year warranty, which is pretty good. I don't see that very often in the products we review. Usually, it's one or two years, but they're backing up with a five-year warranty. And the pricing on this comes in under $800. That's very affordable compared to a lot of other units out there that are being sold that could come in as high as twice that.And before we get into the installation part of this, one thing I do wanna call out to you guys is that you might notice that with the design of this roof basket, that the front edge sticks out a little bit over the rear of your freedom panels. Now we tested that out and we were able to lift our freedom panels out with the roof rack mounted, no problem. So that is not gonna be in your way, and you can still enjoy the open-air feeling with the freedom panels removed. Now, as far as the assembly and installation, I'm giving it a very simple one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter. Very simple tools is all you're gonna need, and it's basically piecing it together and assembly work. If you have a nice workspace, maybe a large table would keep it up here at this height, make it a little bit easier to work on, or just clear out your garage space and do it on the floor. Either way, it's not a very complicated install. The only thing that's gonna be tricky about it is this is quite a heavy unit. Manufacturer weighs it at about 115 pounds. So getting it assembled and mounted up on your Jeep is a little bit tricky. As you'll see here in the video, I grabbed three sets of hands to help me get it up there so we're not damaging the Jeep when we put it in place. That's the only thing that's tricky to this install. All in all, you should be looking at about two hours of your time, guys. So, with that said, let's take a look at the tools we're gonna use and go ahead with the installation.Okay. So, the tools we're gonna use for this installation, guys, are pretty basic, a 13-millimeter crescent wrench, a 6-inch extension, a 3/16th Allen socket, or you could use the Allen key that is provided in this kit and an impact wrench. Okay, guys, as we move to the first steps of this installation, once you unbox this, I fully recommend sorting out your hardware. There are a lot of nuts and bolts that come in this kit. And you're gonna notice that they're all Allen head or Allen key bolts. Some are shorter than others. There's two lengths in there. We're gonna wanna grab the short ones to get started here, and we're gonna put three in per side to mount up the rear rail to the side rails. All right. We're starting here with our left side rail or driver side rail, and the rear rail is gonna slide up inside of it here and just line up these three holes at the back. I'm gonna start three bolts on there. Just finger-tight for now and then we'll tighten things down as we move along. And then do the same three on the other side of the back rail.All right, guys. Now, these center support pieces are basically gonna serve as the floor of our roof rack. I'm gonna start with this first one here. It's pretty tight-fit if you put it in diagonally. At least on this first one, you can get it in. Now we have a total of five of these, okay? And they're gonna lay out like this, this rear one where I'm standing at the back of the roof rack. So this one, and if you can picture the middle one, and then the front one, we're all gonna use the longer bolts to fasten these down because at the same time, those same bolts are gonna be holding these floor panels to the frame, but also gonna mount these which is part of the bracket system that's gonna fit onto the sides of our Jeep and actually hold the entire roof rack to the roof of your Jeep. So, that's why we need the longer bolts for these. They're gonna be going through more pieces of bracketing. So, I'm gonna go ahead and grab those bolts, and we're gonna get started bolting this down along with the mounting brackets. All right. So, once we have these holes lined up, I'm gonna grab this bracket and come underneath it like this, and you're gonna wanna take your longer bolt like I said and drop it in like that, and over here. And I'm just gonna start these nuts, finger-tight for now, we'll tighten everything up later. I'm just gonna keep these snug for now so they can move a little bit, and that way, we can adjust it as needed for tight fitment later on. We're gonna go ahead and mount the other one on the other side.All right, guys. Now, we've added a second table as you can see. This is quite a large assembly project here. Obviously at home, you might be doing this on the floor of your garage. So, obviously, you probably have more space to work, but for the sake of making a video here for you guys, we're putting it up here on the table with some woodblocks to kind of level it out. So, grab your next floor plate and we're gonna slide it into place. Like I said, this is technically the second plate to go in. And the fourth plate to go in, we're gonna use the shorter hex head bolts or Allen key bolts. Okay. Grabbed a couple of the shorter ones.And again, finger-tight for now. And we'll go ahead and button down the other end. All right. Now we're gonna put in our middle panel. All right, guys. Now to button this one down when we're using one of these brackets, of course, grab the longer bolt. All right. Next panel. And again, we're not using the mounting bracket, so go with the shorter bolt. Then do the same thing on the other side. All right. And our last plate, go ahead and grab a pair of the longer ones. And then do the two on the other side. Okay, guys, the last bit of the frame we need is the front piece. Now, if you're gonna be mounting any off-road lighting, this is where you would mount it on in these little slots here. And once you get it mounted to the rest of the rack and before you put it on the Jeep, now would be the time to mount that lighting up. We're not mounting anything on this roof rack today, so we're gonna go ahead and just finish up the assembly.We're using the remaining four short bolts that we have in the kit to attach this to the rest of the frame. Then go ahead and do the same two on the other side. All right, guys. Now we pretty much have everything loosely assembled. The things we can tighten down at this point are gonna be the bolts at the corners, as well as the second and fourth panels, we can tighten those down. And remember, we're keeping these loose, the ones that incorporate the brackets because we're gonna wanna be able to slide those in and out to get proper fitment when we set it up on top of the roof. And the nuts that are in here are 13-millimeter, so go ahead and grab your crescent wrench.And to tighten up the Allen bolts, you can either use the Allen key in the kit, or a 3/16th socket that I'm using right now. Then go ahead and do the corners on the other side. And just a reminder, it's 13-millimeter bolts all the way or nuts all the way around and 3/16th Allen key all around for this hardware.Once you've tightened down on this side, obviously, repeat that for these planks on the other side, keeping the ones with the mounting brackets loose so we can fit them into place properly. So, if you've been working along with us, you already know what I'm about to say, which is that this unit is very heavy. It makes it very strong, but it is substantial weight to it. So, if you're feeling really good this morning, you had your Wheaties, you might be able to do this with one friend. We're gonna grab a couple other people because this thing weighs approximately 100 pounds. And we don't wanna get all loose and wobbly up there, and next thing you know, you're scratching the roof for your Jeep. So, we're gonna grab a couple extra sets of hands here, and we're gonna lift it in place and show you how to do that.And adjust it as you need to, get it in there snug. All right, guys. Now what we have left, we're gonna show you how we're gonna do it. You could probably flip-flop these steps and I don't know how much difference it's gonna make to be quite honest with you. But my preference is we're gonna grab these brackets out of the kit and the longer Allen key bolts. And you basically put them up here like this and bolt it into the bracket. That way, once we do all six of those all the way around the Jeep, then we know precisely where the brackets are gonna have to be tightened down up on the rest of the roof rack. Just my preference, you could tighten these down up top first and then do these brackets. It's almost six and one-half dozen the other, but this is the way we're gonna show you here today. So let's get to it.Now that we're in tight on this shot, guys, I wanted to show you how we have this lined up. You're gonna wanna have this bracket as far back as possible in this rain gutter to keep your roof basket as far back as possible. And that's to allow maximum clearance at the front end for the freedom panels. So, go ahead and grab your bracket. There's a little padded part here, that's the part that's gonna go underneath and we'll just get it started by hand first. Then you can take your Allen key and tighten it down. All right. Now with that one, go ahead and finish up on the driver side. All right, guys. Now that everything else is tightened up, last thing to do is tighten up the bolts for these top brackets. Go ahead and repeat these steps on the driver side.Okay. So, that's a wrap on this review and installation of the Rugged Ridge Hard Top Roof Rack for all 2018 and later Jeep Wrangler JL Unlimiteds. For all things Wrangler, keep it right here at extremeterrain.com.

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