etrailer | Yakima ShowDown Kayak or SUP Carrier and Lift Assist Review - 2021 Audi Q7

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Hi, everyone, Aiden here with etrailer.com. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at the Yakima ShowDown kayak carrier with load assist here on your 2021 Audi Q7. Now it's going to be a unique carrier with that load assist. And what that means is you've got these two handles right here, and once everything's unpinned and unstrapped, we can actually pull this out and lower it down or help lift our kayak up into place on our roof so we don't have to reach as high and as far with this taller vehicle to get our kayak up there. Let's check it out. So you can see here, we're gonna be holding the boat similar to a saddle-style carrier.
What that means is the hole is gonna be down rather than having the boat more upright. That means it will take up more space on the crossbar, but that's perfectly fine as long as you're boating alone. There's plenty of room on here for just the one kayak and we've got a little bit of room to spare. We probably couldn't fit two of these on here. So if you do need to carry two boats and still want that load assist, maybe check out the Malone DownLoader with the Telos load assist that's gonna hold it in a J style, more upright position.
And that load assist system will help you get it into place while still saving space on your roof rack on the other side for another pair of the carriers. Now it is going to have an 80 pound weight capacity, so just make sure that you're staying within those limits. And if you look in closely by the clamps here you will notice that there is a place where we can add lock cores. So when the carrier is unloaded, we don't have to worry about someone coming by, undoing the hand knobs and just taking it off of our roof, if we choose to add those lock cores. Now, when we get to the install, we'll show you a little bit closer how all this works, but essentially this hold just slides out and we'll pivot down like this to a more manageable height to get your boats loaded or unloaded.
Now, comparing this to something like the Thule Hullavator that actually has some gas struts that will help assist with this lift here, whereas I am doing all the lifting here. Now, don't get me wrong. The extra point of leverage here is a lot easier than just lifting the boat and having some actual handles to grab onto makes the process easier too. But if you're looking for that maximum assist, that Hullavator might be the better option for you. For me, this is perfectly fine and I find that it's not too difficult to do on my own.
Now we're actually getting 26 inches of drop from the roof here. So it does put the kayak at a very good height. Now, if you are a little bit shorter, you might find that is still a little bit high and that's where something like the Telos might work better because those poles do come all the way to the ground and you'll be able to get it a little bit lower, but here is pretty fine for me. And I find that it's a good amount of drop without being too much. And it still has a good distance from the vehicle when it's down like this. You can see, even with some weight or pressure we're still maintaining a good 4 to 5 inches of gap between the vehicle and the carrier. So I'm not worried about any contact there, either. You can see this will stick up about 21 inches from the top of your crossbar. So just keep that in mind with the added height if you're pulling into a garage or parking garage, anywhere with low clearance. This does fold down when it's not in use though, making this the tallest point. And that's only gonna stick up about 7 1/2 inches from the top of the crossbar. So everything's fairly low clearance, but just still keep in mind that it's up here and it's gonna be adding some height to your vehicle. And this does also adjust here with the hand knob on the side, so if we do need to adjust for a different size kayak, we can. And just tighten that down with the hand knob to keep it secure. Now, because we do have to set this out far enough so that it doesn't hit our vehicle, it does look like it sticks out quite a bit but looking in line with the mirror here we're not sticking out any further than that. So I wouldn't be worried about pulling into a garage or a parking spot having this hit something. As long as your mirror doesn't hit, this shouldn't hit either. Now, getting everything set up is gonna be really easy. We're just gonna start by setting this up onto our crossbars with