Rhino-Rack Ski and Fishing Rod Carrier Brackets for Pioneer Platform Rack

Video Transcript for Rhino-Rack Pioneer Platform Rack Ski and Fishing Rod Carrier Review

Hey guys, it's Randy here at etrailer.com.Today we're going to be taking a look at a Pioneer Rack add-on. So Rhino Rack has a Pioneer Rack, very good very versatile rack, you're able to add it to just about any type of truck, jeep, SUV, car and give yourself a nice, big stable platform. It's kind of different than a lot of the cargo baskets or cargo boxes, but this one we have lots of attachments to add on to it to make it 00:00:26 really customized for what your particular applications are going to be.In this case today, we've got the Rhino Rack Fishing Pole, Ski and Snowboard holder. Now all ski and snowboard holders do have the capability of holding fishing poles. There's nothing really crazy about that idea, but generally those are going to sit flat on top of your rack. It takes up a lot of that space.What the Rhino Rack brackets here that fit our Pioneer Rack, we can then attach this to it.

Now I'm going to open it up so we can see really why that works so we in this situation. You see as I open it, my rods aren't falling. We have accommodations in here where we can actually hold our rods in place. That's one of the concerns I had with mounting it on the side here, I think it's going to be probably better suited for fishing poles in this situation because for putting in a snowboard we could hold it with one hand, we could close both ends. If we're trying to do two sets of skis, which we'll show you in a minute, might offer us a little bit more of a challenge.

But you can see here, we can open these up, get our fishing poles out, we could even allow our fishing poles to rest here if we wanted to string some line onto it, if we wanted to get our line through the eyelets, tie on different lures.Overall, it's going to be a nice, easy-to-use system that will lock, that way we have our protection there. Push the button to open it up. You see this rod that I have here is about the max that you're going to use in this situation. There's been a couple times it's kind of come out and that's why I mounted it with these doors, or with the top portion down. That way if they do come out, our rod just comes down and rests.Now if you'd prefer, these can be mounted on there the other way.

To where when they open, our upper portion is going to go up. That'll make it easier to access the buttons, that'll make it easier to access the locks. But with my poles I hate when they fall over and they hit the ground. You got to figure an eyelet's going to get messed up, you're going to unbraid 00:02:40 the line a little bit, maybe mess up your lure, maybe mess up the reel housing and take a really good looking reel that now has a bunch of little gravel marks on it, I like this protection. I like the fact if any of these happen to come out, I don't put them in there exactly right, that they'll have some place to rest and I won't have any issues.In my opinion, this is going to be a really good solution for transporting rods, especially around this area we do a lot of pond hoping.

We'll go from one pond to the next, to the next, to the next throughout a day, and we've got a lot of nice clear water streams, muddy water streams to where you can hit different access points maybe along a eight, nine, 10 mile strip. I think it's going to be ideal, we're not going to be shoving our rods back in our truck, them getting all tangled up, we can kind of keep them separate and ready to go here on the outside. I think it looks cool, especially with it attached off the side of that Pioneer Rack. I think it gives it a kind of a really stand out appearance, you know you're more serious about your fishing business let's say.Now if I we're going to be transporting these a long distance, if I'm going 80 miles an hour down the highway for 200 miles, I'd want these protected. I wouldn't want them just hanging out there where road stuff can come up and hit them, rocks or dirt, debris, different things like that, so I do a rod sock. I'd have them covered, keep them protected, but they could still store in there really nicely, get them out of the vehicle, it's going to free up a lot of room inside there and you're not going to have to worry about those tips being busted if your kid or buddy happens to get it hung on their shirt or something, that happens a lot when you have them stored inside vehicles and it can really ruin a trip.Something I also like is the accessibility. We're able to easily get to these rods on the side. Now on a sedan it might not be a big deal, but when you're dealing with jeeps like this, SUVs, trucks, it can be pretty high. With the Pioneer Rack, you could mount a fishing pole holder on the top, but then you're generally going to have to climb up there to release it and get them in and out. Using the brackets, we're able to get this off to the side, and like I said not only does it give it a pretty cool look, but it makes it really easy to get to each one.You can see here we've got really good hold, the pads are designed to compress, really hold the rods in well as well as the tabs that stuck out that we showed you earlier. Now whether you're using fishing poles, skis or snowboards we do have a lock core right here that's included, it comes with two keys, that prevents us from being able to press the button here. It's going to keep everything secure and ensure it'll be there when we get back outside. You'll see we've got a nice large button here as well. It's very pronounced and even if you had on gloves during the wintertime ski and snowboarding, you can still get a good feel of it and press it without any issue and allow it to open up for you.In my opinion, this is a really good setup. It allows a lot of accessibility kind of like we talked about, and I trust it. I would put my rods in here, I would travel short distances, if I wanted to go long distances I would protect them. All in all, I think it's going to be a really good solution for you. Now this isn't just a one-trick pony, like we said this will also take care of some skis and some snowboards, so we'll take a look at that now.Now as far as loading skis, it's going to be a little bit of a challenge with this on the angel like this. We can bring our first set up, we want to hold those in place and bring our second set up hold those in place and then be able to close both of those top covers and at that point just lock them up, we'll be ready to head down the road.Now just like our fishing rods, our skis are held in place really, really well. Now I don't have a whole lot of experience transporting skis, being from the Midwest we don't have a bunch of snow-covered mountains around here. But I will say that these are held in place on this carrier just as good as any other ski carrier I've handled.The construction of these are also really nice, we've got full aluminum here with polymer end caps, polymer buttons. So all in all, these should hold up against corrosion for an extremely long time, whether we're using it on a snow-covered mountain or down on the beach where salt water's present or just in general in marine environments, you're really not going to have to worry about that.Now before you head out to your vehicle to get this installed, it's a good idea to do some pre-assembly before you put the bracket on the rack. You can see there's three slots here for us to choose from, and this is going to bring it further out or closer in to your vehicle. I like that option, we can kind of fine tune it where we want it. We're going to be using our middle slot and so we're going to put our plate on the bottom we're going to thread in our bolts there and we're just going to get these started. We don't want to tighten them down really at all. So we'll get those started and that'll be our attachment point to attach the bracket to the rack.Next thing we'll need to do is get our rod holder, or ski and snowboard holder attached there. This is going to attach using these two holds and it's going to use the hardware that came with the holder so nothing additional to get. What we need to do is open it up, get to the two silver nuts here. We'll use our Allen key and we're going to loosen those up all of the way, take them off there. Okay, and once we have that top off, we've got our bottom attachment points if we we're going to be just attaching this to a roof rack. We're going to set those aside, and we want to hang on to our T-Bolt set. These are the components we'll need. Two T-Bolts, two flat washers, two lock washers, two barrel nuts and the provided Allen key.Now we're going to take our ski and snowboard carrier and you can install this with the lock and the release facing upward or you can do it downward. You can see there are catches in here for your rods, so you can kind of poke them in there and they will hold them. I kind of like doing it this way, while it is a little bit harder to get to the lock and to the button, I'm pretty clumsy so I can imagine as I'm putting my fishing poles in here I'll drop one. I'd rather it just come down and rest here than hit the ground. So that's my opinion, do it however you want basically but that's the way I'm going to do it.And we'll take our T-Bolt and it's going to come up through, and it will go up through the same hole that we took it out of inside, you'll see right there. Now on to that we'll have a flat washer, we have a lock washer and we've got our barrel nut. Now this is something I'm glad we only have to do once, it's kind of tight to get this in here. So if you plan on putting this on and off, on and off you can plan for a little bit of a struggle it's not bad, but definitely takes a little bit of effort to get in there. I'm going to leave that one a little bit loose for now.WE'll come to our other end, that'll come up and through, and see kind of the same spot there. And this one's a little bit tighter, but you can still get your hand in there to work. All right. Now I just like to kind of square everything up, make sure it's running pretty much in line and we'll tighten those down. Now you really don't need to over-tighten these, just get them nice and snug. Just get your other one set up the exact same way.Now we've got everything assembled, we're out here at our rack. Of course if you already have the rack you know there's a slot here in the front and in the back that's a little bit larger. Now it's going to allow us to slide our tab in . got it 00:10:19 down, and then we'll just want to move it to whatever distance we like. You can see it's going to tilt out a little bit so we can take some of the slack out of our bolts there, but we still want it to be adjustable because depending on the type of fishing rod that you're going to be using or the length of your skis, you'll want to adjust it accordingly.We're going to brings our to about right there, then we can use a 10 millimeter just to secure down those bolts. And the bolts are stainless steel so corrosion, rust stuff like that really shouldn't be a problem. Of course we do want them all to be snug, want those lock washers to be fully compressed but we really don't have to over-tighten them. All right, and we got both sides assembled there. Just open our catch, we'll be ready to get our skis or fishing poles in there.Now this is a little bit thicker rod so we'll kind of place that in the bottom here. Now I kind of like the way that comes out and holds it, seems to do a good job. I like that we have four slots here. And as you can see, all in all they fit pretty well. If you're using like a bait caster or a spin cast style, I think they'd fit a little bit better. I think for best results here having these kind of facing in toward the rack is going to buy us the most room. And now to secure it, we'll just place our key in, get that into the locked position so nobody can open them up and make away with our rods.So all in all I like it. I think this is going to be an excellent attachment for your Pioneer Rack, gives your versatility with the fishing poles and with the skis. All in all it'll be really handy, especially if you've already got the Pioneer Rack, it'll make a real good attachment.