Front Runner Watersport Carrier w/ Tie-Downs - Canoe, Kayak, or SUP - Channel Mount

Video Transcript for Front Runner Kayak or SUP Watersport Carrier Review

Hi, everyone. Aiden here at etrailer. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at this Front Runner water sport carrier. This can be a great way to carry your kayaks, canoes, or standup paddleboards on your Front Runner platform racks, both the Slimline and the Slimsport. It's a simple channel-mounted installation and gives you a pretty solid way to get your boat up there, including tie-downs and straps. Let's check it out.

Now, I will say it includes straps, but only two of them. It's gonna be what they call strap-its. It's essentially a cambuckle strap with a sort of bungee elastic section in it. And when you pull the strap tight, a lot of that tends to stretch out and put some tension on the strap. It's gonna help absorb some road shock, but it's not gonna be like a ratchet strap, even though the name maybe makes it sound like it will be.

So just be careful with it. And with anything water-sports-related, we always recommend bow and stern tie-down straps. Those are not included. So if you get those, just make sure you're using them. And if you need a good kit, etrailer makes one.

That'll give you all four straps if you wanted to swap these out. But it gives you those bow and stern straps with anchors for the hood and hatch if you need them, just to make sure that you're hauling your water sports safely. These eye bolts are also included in the kit. These hooks can go directly to the carrier itself, underneath. We'll show that a little bit later whenever the boat is unhooked and it's easier to see.

But if you can't reach it for whatever reason, you can use the included eye bolts to give you that anchor point that you would need. And I will say that even though it only includes the two straps, it does hold it up there pretty well. Side to side here, there's not really a whole lot of movement from the boat. It's held down into these pads pretty well and the pads compress pretty easily, which helps them kind of form around the boat. And even front to back here, you kind of get a little bit of movement, but it reaches a point where that strap sort of binds up. Still, I would recommend bow and stern straps just because it puts my mind more at ease, especially going highway speeds. But this does do a really good job at holding it in place. With all that in mind, though, I wanna see how it performs. We're gonna take the carrier through our test course, take it over some speed bumps, side to side action, and also take it on the highway for a little bit of driving. We've got a GoPro set up to see how it performs, and I did choose to add those bow and stern straps for that added layer of security. So let's check it out. So we'll start off on the speed bumps here, going nice and slow in the parking lot, and I'm kind of peeking up through the sunroof just to see if the kayak is moving at all. And it doesn't look like there's any movement from what I can see. Obviously, my view's a little bit limited. But one thing I'm also going off of is the sound. I don't hear anything jostling around up there, which is always a plus. Usually, if something's loose, you'll hear it and it'll be making a lot of noise up there, but everything feels pretty secure so far. Now, as we pull out onto the main road here, I'm not gonna be looking up at it, but I will be listening for wind noise, any extra rattling that we might hear at highway speeds. So far, everything is really solid. Now, the last thing we want to test out is the side to side, some sort of a basic maneuvers just to make sure that the carrier holds up. If you did have to make a sudden turn to avoid an accident or maybe you just took a corner a little too hard, and I'd say everything is doing well. With the kayak unloaded, we can get a better look at the carrier itself. These pads are gonna be coated in this sort of fabric material that does pick up dirt and things, but I think it should stay, for the most part, fairly clean and be fine getting wet. And underneath is where there's some crossbars on the carrier that the snap hooks can actually hook into. So that's how we had our kayak secured before, the back hook was hooked into there, and then we're using that eyelet out front just because we have the carrier offset so far to the side and the bar underneath this one here is just hard to get to. So depending on how you have your carrier set up, maybe both are accessible, maybe neither of them are. Whatever you end up doing, you've got the options to tie down both on or off the carrier. Now, we've got all the hardware loosened up to show you the different options you have with this carrier. With all that in mind, just remember it can handle 132 pounds, so don't overload it. But in terms of the different configurations you can have set up, there's a lot. We've got the second carrier behind me still tightened up. We chose to have it like this because this angle gave us the optimal contact to the hole of our kayak, but also offset it a little bit to make it easier to load and save space on the other side of the platform. But you could lock it in here, at a more aggressive angle, or flat. There's a couple different intervals there or some combination of the two where one's flat and one's at an angle. And the way you do that is by first loosening all the hardware so you can make those adjustments to fit your boat. But then there's going to be nuts and bolts that'll go in some holes on the side here to lock it in at whatever position you want. It's not any position. There are set holes that you need to get to line up, so you'll find the interval that works for you. Now, if I lift up the one side, underneath you can see how we're actually attaching. So there's two M8 bolts slid into the top channels with a washer and nut on top to secure them. And that's how this actually attaches into the channel of our platform. Again, this will work with the Slimline or the Slimsport because it's not relying on the side rails to make any connections. One thing that is nice about the Slimline, though, is that when it's down, this does kind of rest on the side rail. When you've got it bolted in, it'll hover just above there, but it lines up really well. But it's gonna work fine on the Slimsport because you don't need that side rail for a connecting point. And that's really all there is to it. It's honestly a pretty simple carrier, not a whole lot of bells and whistles going on. But some things I like about it is the fact that it bolts into the platform, making for a very sturdy mount. And whenever you make your adjustments, those bolt into. Rather than just being a small latch that's usually consisted of plastic on other kayak carriers, this one's metal and it's gonna be a lot sturdier. It gives me a little bit more confidence going down the road. Some things I would add. I would definitely include a strap kit just because bow and stern tie-downs are something that we always recommend, and it's gonna keep your stuff a little bit more safe. And while it's nice that you can flip this around, say you've got a kayak and a paddleboard, and the two are just shaped a little bit differently and we want to adjust the shape of this to fit whatever we're carrying, it's just a little bit more involved because you have to unbolt everything, move it, get all the holes to line up, and then rebolt it. It's not something that I would want to do every time I'm going out, but if it's maybe more of a seasonal thing you're doing, then I think it'll be just fine. Or if you've just got one thing you're carrying, you've got the one kayak or the one canoe, then I think it's gonna be a really perfect addition to your Front Runner platform racks. Thanks for watching.