https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQC-jWNTH_o
Watch this video to learn how to install an Offroad Animal Scout roof rack to suit the next-gen Ranger or Raptor.
Video Transcript
Checking the Parts in the Roof Rack Kit
(0:08) First things first, unwrap the packaging and make sure that you've got everything. So we've got five cross rails. These are your front mounts here, so you have a right and a left, and your rear mounts should have a right and a left, and your wind deflector. This is a standard wind deflector. If you've opted for the wind deflector that takes the light bar, you'll still get this one, so you can change over if you need to. It looks similar to that, but it has a little step in it that takes the light. And then you get your nuts and bolts as well.
Assembling the Roof Rack Before You Start
(0:41) So it's really easy to put together the rack. So first thing you do is always put your rack together before you actually start taking the car apart. Now, it's pretty easy to take the car apart. I'm gonna show you how to do it step by step, but you are going to drop the roof liner, no drilling, but you do drop the roof liner so you can get the bolts through. So I'm not going to run through exactly how to put it together step by step or show you, but I'll tell you how to do it.
So basically, we have two sides here, and the rails go through the two sides, and we leave the centre loose at the moment because when we put it on the car, the mounts are going to go on. So I'll time-lapse that so I'll make it really quick for you, but basically put the rack together first, leave everything loose, and you'll tighten it when it's on the car.
So let's put the rack together now.
(1:45) So it's easiest to put the rack together upside down. You've got the rails sitting flat, so this is basically upside down, and you can put the cross rails through and just run your M8s through again. Keep it all loose and make sure you have everything before you actually take the car apart.
Now, what we're going to do is take the roof liner off. I'll show you how to do that, and then we'll put the rack on and then we'll put the wind deflector on last.
Removing the Roof Liner
(2:13) Okay, now taking the roof liner off, it's actually really not that hard. It's daunting for a lot of people, but don't stress. It's actually pretty easy, step by step. I'll show you how to do it. Tools-wise, a little kit like this goes a long way. So this has got your Torx bits, your drivers, and your socket sets on it. Great. Now, you can use a flathead screwdriver, but we have what we call a trim tool with a little angle on it. Trim tools are great. Like I said, you don't need a trim tool; you can use a socket head, sorry, flathead screwdriver.
So basically, we need to take everything off that's holding the roof liner. Number one, these handles here, right? So if you get your little trim tool, you can take the front and the back one off just reaching in. You can see the gap and start from the inside. Now, inside there is a, I think it's a six or seven. Let's see here, six. Yep, it's a six-millimeter socket, and you can take off each of those. Let's do that now.
I like to do most things in the driver's seat, then the passenger seat, then go to the back seats. It makes it easier for me. Now, one of the biggest tricks is trying not to lose all the components and know which ones go where. So that's up to you, but I'll tell you what I do so I don't lose all the bits and pieces. So I'm only going to show you one side. No need to go to every single one because again, the passenger side is exactly the same here as the driver's side.
So getting that off, yeah, so we don't lose the screws, I leave the screws in there, and then I actually reinstall those covers so we don't lose the screws or the covers, and then I can leave that up here on the dash. So that first one's done. All right, next is we're going to take off the visor here. Now, the visor has got this retainer here and the original one there. So you'll see there's a little access panel in here, and there is a little spot you can peel back to show you a Torx screw in there. Now, I believe that is, let's see, a T20 maybe? That looks small. Need our extension piece on this bad boy. So what's another cool thing in this little kit comes with all the tools you need. Yes, T20 is the correct one. So we undo that and try not to lose it. So I like to keep these. Now, don't put them up here; you'll lose them down the vents there. Put your screws back in so you don't lose it and keep it in your little chip holder there.
Now again, we need to take this side off here, so you can see the separation line there. You pop both sides off, just nice and easy. Peel in there and then peel it off the back, and that reveals two more screws, which is what did I say? T20 torx. Right. Now we're going to peel this off and just peel back the top. Now I've got a phone holder here, which I've obviously got to shift out of the way. Oh, these stick on pretty good. Now, there's a little speaker down there. Unplug the speaker, a little tweeter, and there's a little clasp on it. So that's your little tweeter there, and basically, just unplug it and save that out of the way. All right, so that's basically everything we're going to do in the driver's seat. We're going to do the same thing for the passenger seat, except there's an extra little one here, and we're going to lift that up, peel these bits out here, and take out those torx screws.
(7:56) Here's a close-up of your tweeter and a little clip. So you basically just push this end in here, separate them to pull your A-pillar off. All right, now up here is our handle. Let's get the tripod set up so I show you how to fit that one. Get my trusty trim tool from the inside closest to the spring, pop it, and it looks like we have another torx bit there, but it looks like this one's bigger. So we reckon it's going to be a T25 or even probably 30. See here, yep, T30. All right, we're going to put that in the ratchet because I haven't got a pull in the other one. Up she comes. All right, before we leave the passenger seat, we are going to take off the centre console here. So you've got clips here and here. So we open the sunglass holder, get your fingers under, and we just pull it right. If you have the switch panel here, you will need to unplug it, and there's a connector here that we need to unplug as well. It's kind of hard to see with the camera; it's pretty dark in here. But we will unplug this one here. And off she comes. That easy. You might have two here depending on what model you have, but basically, just unplug everything and take your top console off.
(9:54) Okay, in the back seat here, all the action. We've got a lot to take off in the back seat. So we are going to take the front seat belt off. It's probably easier from the back seats; you're not bending behind you. This handle here, this handle here, and a lot behind me. So first, we're going to start with the seat belt. We're actually just taking the top off, so we are going to pop the top cover off. So just out of the way there and allows us access to the torx, which I believe is a t50. Yes, all right, this one's actually quite stiff. There we go. So we're just going to let this hang loose. So all right, take the panels off as well. But first things first, get the actual bolt out. It's holding it in place. All right, out of the way. So just like the front, this handle has the same exact setup. All right, peel off your little covers and use your six mm to pull those out. All right, pulling this off. So just like the front, we don't want to lose our bolts again. So we put them back in the holes and we reinstall the covers. That way, we won't lose anything.
Now what I like to do with these rear ones here is actually put them in the seat pocket in front of me, but don't lose them. All right, so this one here, is basically identical to what we just showed you. So I'm not going to show you that one. So we're going to do that on both sides, take those off, and then we'll start taking some panels off. Okay.
(11:50) So we've got the seat belt down. It's time to actually remove the panelling on the B-pillar here. So you've got clips here, clips here, and clips here. So what I like to do is push back the material a little bit in here, and you can peel the top ones back and then you just basically move your way down the bottom panel so you can put your fingers in the gap here where the seat belt is, pop it out, and off she comes. Now, the reason we're doing that is to take off the pressure here on the A-pillar there. Okay, now we've got the A-pillar and the B-pillar panels removed. Next is this rubber seal here on all the doors, not the bottom, just the top and sides on all the doors. It's that easy to pull off.
(12:45) All right, probably my least favourite thing to do in this whole install is taking these rear hooks out here. They're, there's no fastener in there, so you get your pry tool or your screwdriver and you pull out that that holds it in place. Now getting this off because it's got a clip that spreads out when it gets in there, it kind of sucks. So what you want to do is tilt it forward and pull at the same time. So when you pull and tilt, you can see the back end comes off, and then you got to pop it out, don't break it, but you might feel like you're going to break it, then keep these two together because you don't want to lose them. And don't lose this; I've already lost one before. Another car, don't lose it.
(13:35) Okay, next up, fold your rear seat down, and we're gonna take the seat belts off the back here, so get our little pry tool here, pop up, and do that to all three. Next, we're going to take off the bump stops for the rear seat, use a little bit of rubber here, T25 Torx bit, we unscrew these ones on either side, again, don't want to lose it, put it in the seat pocket in front of you, well, in this case, behind me, but you know. Okay, so now we're going to take off the covers for the centre seat here, basically pull it off, it goes off that simple, and then we're gonna pull off this whole panel here. So there's lots of clips. I just like to start at the end and basically come all the way around. Yeah, and on she goes. Now get this one out of the way. Now on the side here, we do need to take these ones off as well, so these ones here. So the bottom one overlaps, so you're gonna pull the bottom one first, so this clips on top there. Now, this top one here, basically pulling off. Now there's one thing with these top ones here, there are little clips that hold onto these. See that little clip right there, the top two stayed in, you need to pull them out, and they're really sharp so you might need to use pliers, but you got to take them off there, and you got to put them back on the original location here; otherwise, you'll never be able to reinstall it though. Like I said, you might need pliers because it bloody hurt my hands. All right, there you go, back on. So let's do that for both sides now.
(15:57) I forgot when you pulled off the console there, there are two screws in here. It takes a T20 Torx bit; you gotta take these two off here, and that's our last step before we pull off the headliner. Now, the headliner is kept secured in the middle with a magnet, but due to how fragile the headliner is, you need a friend. So I'm gonna get a friend; I've got a friend right here, he's behind me. So we're ready to pull the headliner off. I've got my mate on the other side, Steve. So we're going to put our hand here and gently, oh, there we go, dropped it. Oh, actually, it's that easy. So you can see inside there's the magnet in the middle. Now, now that we got that off, it's basically time to put the roof rack on. So up in the corner, up in there, right behind the airbag. So that's your airbag there. Be careful with it. And up in the corner in the front, we need to put our bolts. But first up, we are going to remove our section here. I'll show you how to do that next.
Installing the Roof Rack
(17:02) Okay, now we've got the roof liner down, up in the corner there you see that, that's the back. That's an eight-millimeter socket required for that and in the front here, I'm going to move the seat down a bit. Okay, in the front and just behind the airbag there, same thing, 8 mm socket to get that bolt off. We'll take those off now.
Okay, now we're up on top of the roof, we need to peel back our rubber liner here. So get yourself a plastic scraper or trim tool because you don't want to scratch the roof here. So basically, you get under there and you start peeling, and then we can see the stud is just here. All right, see that stud there, as I said, we just took the nut off. Now we got our rear bracket here, what we're going to do is you sort of line it up with the hole, and then you're going to cut and peel off just in front of that. All right, so I've got a little knife here, which is basically a marking in front of that. So we want to peel off just until we get to that point there, and then we're going to cut this. Now be careful not to cut into the roof, that would be bad. There is a metal strip in there, so it's not super easy but you work at it carefully and off she comes, all right, so we're going to keep that because when we put the bracket on so we make sure it fits. Now, all right, looks like it fits perfectly and we're going to put that bit back on and secure it back down so it looks nice. So what we need to do now is we got to scrape off all the double-sided tape that Ford has put there and basically cut this bit so back so we know where that's going to go, which is roughly about there, so we're going to cut this bit about there. Do this one off the car so you don't damage the roof and then we'll go back on, the easiest way actually to pull this double-sided tape off is really just to peel it by hand. Once it's all off, we're going to get some isopropyl alcohol, give it a good clean, and then just when we're ready to put the roof on the roof rack on, we're going to put some silicon adhesive silicon down here, make sure no water gets into your roof, so go all the way off here because we're going to put some new double-sided tape on for the back end here so make sure you do all four before you put the silicone and we'll get there, so we'll do the other side and then on the back and then the front next.
(20:27) Okay, the front is pretty much exactly the same. We're going to get our trim tool again and reach in here and peel it out. All right, and you can see quickly we get the stud out. Take our front bracket, virtually where the stud is we want to cut just behind it. All right, now about 15 mm behind it, that way we're not taking too much off obviously trying not to cut yourself as well, so be careful. All right, take your time on this one. Don't want to damage the car or yourself. Let me see here we go, once we get through the middle and we take the bracket, yep, we're cool, plenty of room there, and again take off the double side of the tape now none is going back on here because the bracket comes pretty far forward so you don't really have much to go there. I mean you could cut a tiny bit off there if you want but I don't think it's really worth it. All right, let's do the other side now.
(22:34) Okay, now we've got all the corners taken off, I'm gonna get some isopropyl alcohol straight onto a rag and clean the whole area up all four corners, you want nice and clean, that way you won't get any water coming into your roof when you put the silicone down, preparation for putting the roof rack on, we're gonna protect the roof with a blanket. You need something soft, that will not scratch the roof especially if you're doing this by yourself, no if you're doing it with a friend that's okay, but I still like to protect the roof.
Okay, we're gonna put on the RTV as you see around the hole, nice and even so no water can get through there, we got our bracket here, basically feeding it through, alright, and then we'll put the nut on from the inside, so you have a Nylock and a washer, put off the inside, we're going to leave it snug but not torqued up yet so we can still move it around once the rack is on, alright we've got the front one on when you get in the nut up from in there you need to use a socket to hold it in place, so we've got them loose so what we're going to do now is lift the roof rack on and then reposition those as required. Lift the roof rack on carefully all right so the roof rack goes on the outside of the brackets. So we'll put the back ones in first then we'll align the front.
Installing the Roof Rack Wind Deflector
(24:36) All right put on the wind deflector up the top we're going to feed in our five nuts for some reason I've only got four here I left one behind now we're going to hold up the wind deflector just in front of where it's gonna go and match all the nuts up where they should go and then we can put it in place and just start them. All right now we're going to start the side ones, line up all the holes.
Reassembling the Interior and Finishing Touches
(25:44) All right, reverse. We're going to put the seat pillars back on so underneath make sure they're all pushed in and then back one here we're gonna push on before we put the seat belt covers on. Then tuck the trim panel back in and push all the clips in and then don't forget your rubber stoppers, the centre one here, and each seat belt. Last thing, don't forget to put your logo plate on. You paid good money so you want to show it off. There you go all done. Car's put together, roof racks on - looking pretty sweet.