Beginner’s Guide to Installing the Thule TopRide Roof Bike Rack for 1 Bike on a 2017 Toyota RAV4

Click for more info and reviews of this Thule Roof Bike Racks: https://www.etrailer.com/Roof-Bike-Ra... Check out some similar Roof Bike Racks options: https://www.etrailer.com/dept-pg-Roof... Search for other popular Toyota RAV4 parts and accessories: https://www.etrailer.com/vehicle/2017... https://www.etrailer.com Don’t forget to subscribe!    / etrailertv   Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-t... Hey, everybody. Adam here with etrailer. Today, we have a 2017 Toyota RAV4, and we're gonna be test fitting the Thule TopRide roof-mounted bike rack. I really like this roof-mounted bike rack. One, because it's super quick and easy to get your bike locked-in in the front. And of course, with any other type of roof-mounted bike rack, we're gonna have a strap in the back. This is gonna be a great option for you if you just have a roof rack and you're not really wanting to get a hitch bike rack. Maybe you just need one bike to get to and fro, this is gonna be a great way to do that. It's gonna be for your fork-mounted bikes and also your thru-axle bikes as well. So, what we're gonna do is take it inside and we're gonna show you how it all works. There are two different ways we can mount this to our roof. You can either use T-tracks, and these are gonna work with your Thule bars, your Malone bars, your Yakima bars; I checked them all in the shop and they work. So, if you don't have Thule bars, you're fine. But you can also wrap it around. So, to do that, what we're gonna do is take these guys. I'm just gonna show you, cause we're not gonna be doing this today, but just in case. So, what you wanna do is you wanna take this little bracket here, it's gonna fit into that slot, just like that. And basically, we're gonna take this side here and it's gonna go in through the back and into this little slot and it's gonna sit right there. And then on the other side, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this and it's gonna fit right into this slot, and it goes through this hole, like that. And then we're just gonna use the same little tightening mechanism right here to get that secured down. On the other side, it's gonna be a little bit simpler. We won't really have to worry about this plastic piece cause it's only for this side. So, let me get this undone real quick. And for the other side, what we're gonna do is take this, that little piece here, there's a larger slot, we're gonna put it in there like this and rotate it just like that. And then on the other side, we're gonna do pretty much the same thing. Take our long little T-bolt, and we're gonna put that all the way through, and it comes through right here. And then we'll take our tightener and thread that on. So, that is what you're gonna do if you wanna wrap it around your bars. But today, since we can, we have T-slots on our roof rack, and we're gonna be using the T-slot mounting kit. So I'm going to go over that with you now. So for the front, we're gonna take our T-bolt, it'll go right here. I'm gonna flip it over to the other side. And what we're gonna do is take the one with our little sleeve here, and we'll put that in there and get it threaded down. We don't wanna tighten it down all the way, but just enough to where it's not gonna come undone. The other side, right here, we're gonna do the same thing. This little hole, right here, you want to go through that hole. And we can use our other one and line this up and do the same exact thing. Tight, but not all the way. This thing is super light, so you don't have to worry about having to have another person with you to be able to put it up. So, the crossbars we're using right now are the Thule Aero bars, so we don't have to trim our little strip on top. But if you do have some, just trim it, and figure out exactly where you want it. Our crossbar's spread, we're gonna want at least 18" and no more than 36". So, the way that you can adjust that, this won't adjust but the back one will. It slides just like that. So what we want to do is put this into the slot, just like that. And we want to put the back one in first, just because it's a little bit farther and it's easier to adjust. And for ease of use for me, I want it to be as close to this side of the vehicle as possible, just so I don't have to really reach over. And then I leave a lot of space for my other accessories. So this seems just about right for me. Now it will, what we want to do is tighten it down. What you want to do is flip that up and then we can flip this up too, and we're going to rotate this clockwise to get a little bit tighter. The goal here is to get a decent amount of pressure on it. That's a little, not too much, so, I'll do a little bit more, a couple more turns. See how it starts to sit down, that's exactly what we want. So, that's a little too much. Just kind of