etrailer | Installing the Thule WingBar Evo Roof Rack for Naked Roofs on your 2021 Audi Q7

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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-t...
Hi everyone. Aiden here with etrailer.com. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at this Thule Roof Rack on our 2021 Audi Q7. Now this roof rack is designed to work with our flush rails with fixed mounting points. What I mean by flush rails is this raised silver portion right here. If they we're raised rails, we would have a gap underneath there and if it we're a naked roof then there would be no rail at all.

These flush rails are gonna stick up just a little bit here and have fixed points where we can thread in and mount our roof rack. If you're unsure if this is the right kit for you just be sure to plug in your vehicle's information to our fit guide on our website and you can find the right kit for your vehicle. So this kit is going to come with the Thule Wingbar Evo Crossbars. You can see they've got this nice aerodynamic shape where they're thicker in the front and taper off towards the back. That'll help with your wind noise and just help them be more aerodynamic.

On the end caps here we can pop them up and open like this to reveal the T slot on top. It's got a really nice integrated weather stripping there that will just kind of separate whenever you add an accessory in there, so you don't have to trim anything or make any cuts or modifications. You just slide in your accessory and it's good to go. You've got that weather stripping in there to keep things nice and quiet, and you can just close that cap up whenever you're ready to hit the road. Now these bars do come in black or silver so you can get them to match your vehicle.

We've got the black ones on there right now and I do think it's a great match for our Audi here today. They are gonna have a 220 pound weight capacity but the towers, the legs here, they do have a 165 pound weight capacity. So we do wanna abide by that lower rated component but it is nice to know that these bars up top are built really strong. Each of the cross bars are gonna be 53 inches long from end to end. So just keep that in mind with your accessories if you do want to put something like a box or a basket and maybe have some room left over on the other side for something like a bike rack.

As far as the height you have, you have three and a half inches from the roof to the bottom of the crossbar here and then four and a half inches from the roof to the top of the crossbar. So it's not a whole lot of height added but whenever you do put an accessory on top of that, that's gonna add some more height. So just keep in mind, all that distance that you watch out for your clearance in places like with your garage or any low clearance parking garages. Now the feet that come with this roof rack here are going to give you fixed attachment points and get a really good hold on that crossbar there. They've got these plastic cores that are included, so you can just use your hands or screwdriver to twist that open, pop that off and you have access to the bolts that are getting this all attached. You can swap that plastic core out for a locking core, but that is sold separately, so if you do want that security aspect be sure to check those out on our site as well. And the final piece of our puzzle here is the fit kit. That's this rubber pad that sits on top of the flush rail here and serves as the attachment point between our leg and the roof. That's going to be custom fit for around the edge of our flush rail here, keeping down any gaps for wind noise and getting that good strong hold onto the vehicle utilizing the fixed mounting points on the flush rail here. Now, because it uses those fixed mounting points it's going to be really easy to install. You don't have to measure out anything to figure out the proper positioning of the bars and everything pretty much is just ready to go. Let's check out that process now. We're gonna start our install off coming to the top of our flush rails here and we can see this small rectangular cutout. What we wanna do is press in on the front of that. It'll start to lift up slightly enough for us to get a fingernail or something in there and lift it up like that revealing some threaded holes on the inside. Then we can come to that threaded hole and we can take our threaded bolt here. We've got a small collar around it. That's gonna be face down with the portion with our Allen key up top. So we can drop that in, find where that threaded hole is and start to just get it threaded in by hand here it'll feel like kind of grab and we can take this included sleeve, drop that over top and use the Allen key to tighten this down the rest of the way. We don't need this crazy tight, so don't over torque it. Right about there s