Lockrack Portable Dressing Room

Video Transcript for Lockrack Portable Dressing Room Review

Hey everyone, it's Evangeline here at etrailer and today I have a pretty interesting product. This is gonna be the Lockrack portable dressing room. It's designed to be used with your current Lockrack base whether it's your kayak carrier, standup paddleboard carrier or even your ladder rack which we actually have set up right now. And this is going to create that dressing room, changing station, shower station whatever you need it to be. It has a couple different features to it as well as an interesting way of attaching to your carrier. So we're gonna talk about that here in this video.

So maybe before your kayaking adventure, after your kayaking adventure if you need a nice private spot in order to change or take that shower this might be something worth considering adding on to your gear. Overall, this is going to be a durable dressing room. So you have a frame that's made of aluminum keeping it lightweight, but also strong for that little extra weight. The material this is made of is nylon so thicker than what you'd usually find on your tents or your sleeping bag similar to the material you'd have for awnings actually. This gives it a little bit of heft which is good if it is a windy day, but if you find that it's especially windy, you also have the options of utilizing the stake anchor points and you can stake this to the ground.

Also at the bottom is your zipper. This is a one-sided zipper, so only usable from the outside. Once you have that unzipped, you can now enter into the dressing room, having that access up here so where you zip up in order to open and then zip down to close gives you a little bit more versatility for the height of your vehicle, but also a bit more privacy. There are different options for how you want to set this up. To make those adjustments, you do have these straps and buckles and then you can just slide them around.

So there's different reasons why you may want a different configuration. I personally like having the door out here to the front because it's more accessible to me, but for other people they want it facing their vehicle. So depending on the level of privacy and ease of use you may prefer, you also have this window to the side of the door. The use of this window is if you need to access items from inside your car. This utilizes a hook and loop strip around the window.

So if you had this facing your vehicle's window you could reach in, grab whatever you needed and bring that into the dressing room. So it really is more there for if you want to use it. I personally don't see it as useful if I have that opening for the zippers but it's nice to have that option. Here on the RAV4, the height of the dressing room is perfect for me but for the taller vehicles this can go as high as 70 inches tall. That's going to be the length or I guess the height of the dressing room fabric. The dressing room also includes three sticks that go around the frame to give it more of a boxy shape than just a hanging curtain. It looks similar to glue sticks in its looks as well as at how it feels. I personally don't think it needs it. In fact, if I was going to use this dressing room I would just keep this off and keep it with the packaging. How much space do you have inside the room Well, it is limited by the inside dimensions of your aluminum frame so that's going to be 36 inches or three feet by 28 inches. So still a good amount of space. As a dressing room, changing room, or even shower stall, it is pretty useful if you use it with your Lockrack carrier. I could definitely see this being used in conjunction with the Yakima RoadShower or another roof mounted shower or water container. With this aluminum frame, you do have to be mindful of where it's sitting in your roof rack because you wanna make sure it has enough weight capacity. I have it sitting pretty far out right now so if I started putting things up like my towels or my clothes or my hygiene bag I would have to be mindful of that weight. This is to be used with a hanger or some hooks or even a rope to keep your hygiene things up because it does not have its own hooks. Now, before even considering the dressing room make sure you have the right base. This only works with the Lockrack base. Now the different sizes of the bases or different configurations, those are all perfectly fine. It just needs to be a Lockrack base. But also consider the vehicle that you are installing this on. If you have a RAV4 like what we have here or maybe a taller vehicle or a lower sedan, then your experiences will be different. Now when you're done with using the dressing room or changing room and you're ready to pack this up, here's what I do to make it a lot easier. We're going to zip down the room, we're going to gather the material and then we're going to roll it up. It doesn't look super neat and pretty but it's definitely efficient because once you get up to the top here, this actually folds up into itself. So see how it just folds. Just gonna let it sit there. I'll put this on top of the frame and then we can disengage the frame from the bracket. So in order to show that I'll just leave this down so you can see how it fits there. This is gonna pivot out of the bracket, so hold onto the frame and just twist it up and then take it out. And that way with it all folded up you can also fold it up right here. You then have an easier to store cloth and then the bracket you just take off later. Put your Lockrack key into your Lockrack base, twist to unlock so that you can pull out that bracket. So this is what it looks like on its own when you want to install the dressing room. You just fit that frame into these brackets. That way you only have two pieces you need to worry about when you need to install this again. You do have some adjustments on this frame so ideally you'll want it further out away from your car so that you have more space and the cloth does not hit the side of your vehicle, but with it further away you also have more weight towards the end so you can push it in closer to give you more stability or to give you easier access to your windows and your doors. So all of that adjustment can be made with the Lockrack key that was included with your carrier. And when you're done with the dressing room and you take this out you can go ahead and put back your arms. You can use your other accessories. For example, there's also the Lockrack clothes hanger that fits in there too. On your base there is this plastic trim panel, and if you have it in the kayak carrier configuration this is usually attached to the base. You can use a flathead screwdriver to pop this out. So this needs to be off if you are using the dressing room. And if you're gonna be carrying around kayaks I highly recommend pushing it back in so that you can install your arms and there's not any extra opening there for possible wind noise. So all in all, if you already have a Lockrack watersport carrier or you're already planning on getting one and you want something to add to that collection, this is something worth considering. It is nice to have that dressing room or that privacy whether you're by the river, by the trails, just out on your adventures and you want that shelter. If you're looking for a shelter on its own though and you weren't planning on getting a Lockrack watersport carrier, we do have some other options. One of those would be the Kelty Dressing Room. It is a standalone privacy shelter that you can set up similar to a tent, but has similar dimensions as this dressing room from Lockrack. So the modularity of this is pretty cool, the way it comes off of its bracket, and once you have it fully assembled, the reinstallation and taking back off is pretty nice too. But it also was a lot of work for something that is really just a changing room. So pros and cons to every product. Hopefully this video showed you how it works, how it looks what types of vehicles this would work on and if it is the right fit for you and your adventures. What you saw today was the Lockrack portable dressing room, and you saw that all here at etrailer.