SMS Auto Parts, Co

The Exposed Rack system is awesome! Love it! It’s a quality built, well thought out and engineered design and the installation is easy.

The fit and finish is also excellent. The matte black traction coating paint is robust and should adequately protect the steel mounts and crossbars from rust and corrosion and also enables the rack to stealthily blend in well with the black rooftop of our Jeep Wrangler JLU.

The low-profile design and the fact that it can be securely mounted to the roof gutters is excellent. The rack mounts attach solidly and securely to the roof gutters. When testing the install by grabbing and shaking the crossbars, there is no play whatsoever and when you shake the rack to test it the whole vehicle rocks.

Another positive is that, unlike another rack manufacturer, you don’t need to drill any holes in the roof nor do you have to install an internal skeleton system for support (an additional cost) to carry heavy loads like a rooftop tent.

With many other racks we looked at before making our decision to go with Exposed Racks, there were complaints of wind noise and whistling at highway speeds. We haven’t noticed any whistling or noise when driving with just the racks on.

We also purchased the Kayak basket which works great and makes loading and unloading the kayaks super easy and the Kayaks are very secure during transport. With the Kayak we there is a slight bit of additional wind noise at speeds above 60mph but not very bad at all and to be expected with such a large kayak sitting on top of a tall Jeep.

Also, using two mounting plates we were able to mount a Kuat Piston SR2 Pro bike rack (which is also an awesome piece of gear) to the rack.

Using an Exposed Racks 24” click-in post we will also be installing a Eufy S330 wireless security camera which can be simply clicked-out and removed while traveling and clicked-in while camping to keep an eye on things while we are away and also to keep watch of the campsite perimeter.

Another nice thing about the Exposed Racks system is the simply click-in click-out feature that enables you to click-out a particular rack accessory when finished using it and store it in your garage until the next time. Simply and easy.

All of the folks at SMS that I have dealt with have been great and their service is excellent. George is very knowledgeable and has taken the time to answer all of my questions. Ana has also been very helpful. I have placed several orders and shipping has been quick and the items have been well packed. Overall and A+ experience. Highly recommend.

I first purchased the SMS Exposed roof racks for my Wrangler JLU w/ soft top set up because I wanted a way to carry my kayak with the soft top and was not looking to spend money on a whole exoskeleton set up/lose functionality of the soft top. The install process was easy and it didn't interfere with the function of the soft top at all! When I first purchased the crossbars they only had kayak carrier and the kayak basket wasn't released yet. My yakima j-low kayak carrier didn't fit the SMS bars, but that's yakima's fault. Said it will 1.25in square bars but doesn't. Other J style carrier did fit though. Once the kayak basket came out I purchased that for convenience and that is also a great product. Very customizable fit with many mounting options and the overall design is pretty great. Easy to load my 12ft kayak by myself, still manageable on the j hooks but not as easy as this basket. Also the optional paddle carrier is super convenient as well. I picked up the gutter mounts so I could move the set up over to my hard top for my snowboard rack etc. The hardtop set up is also easy to use and held our 10ft christmas tree on top for about an hour drive on interstate highways w/ no issue!

I did have an issue with some hardware and initially didn't get a response, but followed up a second time and for some reason the first request didn't even make it through. After the second request the problem was rectified quickly!

My only "complaint" is on me and that's not for not buying the click in versions. I just wanted things to be a hair cheaper, but in hindsight the convenience is definitely worth it with the kayak basket.

included picture of bars using j hooks and kayak basket

Great company and customer service was superior. I purchased a 3-bar roof rack system with click-in brackets for my Jeep JL back in 2021. I remounted the bars and click-in brackets earlier this month with ease! George was very helpful with technical questions over the phone!

Greg was great. Headed out for a ski trip and misplaced our roof rack bolts to tie things down. Quickly sorted me out and got us on our way. I’ll be back, great service is hard to find and these guys bring it.