- Good day, folks, Ben from Snowys today,
showing you how to set up and pack away
The Darche Hard Shell Ridgeback Rooftop tent.
♪ Hit it ♪ (hip-hop music)
So, this rooftop tent is an all-in-one solution
with a hard shell on the outside,
struts to make setup super easy,
and a really comfortable mattress on the inside.
So today, we're gonna go through how to
both attach the Ridgeback tent, a rooftop tent,
onto your car, what comes with it to attach it to your car,
and also how to set the tent up.
So when you get the tent,
you get the main portion of the tent here.
So this is all together.
So you've got a top and a bottom portion.
This is pivoted at the end here
by these heavy-duty stainless steel hinges,
three heavy-duty stainless steel hinges.
Aluminium top and bottom there,
sealed together with a nice, dust-proof seal in here.
And then there's these struts on the side.
So when you come to set it up,
we'll show you this shortly,
this just pivots up and you're good to go.
Before you do that, though,
you do need to attach it to your car,
so you get a few extra things that come with it,
to be able to do that.
Firstly, you do get the ladder,
which hooks on the side of the tent,
and just up on the side here,
there's a couple of brackets on each side,
that you can hook the ladder to
to help you get in and out of the tent
while it's on top of your car.
And then down on the floor here,
we've got what's left of what comes with
the rooftop tents, anyway,
to be able to attach it to the vehicle.
So there's two rails on the bottom of the tent.
When you buy it, they come attached.
We'll show you a bit more on them shortly,
but these are the caps that go on the end.
You get some Allen keys that line up with all the
M8 bolts here that run around
the channels on the side here.
It's the same ones that attach the brackets on the end
so you can service it if need be.
Got a couple of foam pads, no idea what they're for.
You do get a little spanner included with it,
to attach everything.
And you get these brackets here,
which are to go underneath
the roof bar.
So if you're attaching this to the roof bar,
you've got the rails that sit underneath here.
Show you a bit more on it shortly,
but these are the other side to attach it.
Now, these ones here actually slide into the rails
on the bottom of the bar there.
What I do want to
talk to you about first, then, before I show you that,
is these rails on the side here,
an extra feature that you can actually get.
So this end doesn't fit in there,
but this is an M8-size bolt there,
so that actually fits in this rail here.
And you can actually get extra rails that go across here
to attach roof racks on top of your tent if you like,
and then you can carry an extra...
They're rated at 60-kilo,
so you can actually carry an extra 60 kilos on top of this.
So if you just wanna put a stand-up paddle board,
some MAXTRAX or a solar panel or something on top of here,
you can actually get an optional accessory of rails
that sit on here, there's two rails that sit on top,
so you can attach things on top of this,
and then it just folds open
with all that stuff attached on there.
Let me just come around to the end of the tent here.
I just wanna show you underneath,
with the rails that you use to attach it to your vehicle.
Now, these are actually
attached to the tent when you buy it.
They're screwed in through the bottom of the tent here,
so if you do wanna move these,
you're gonna have to start screwing new holes into the tent,
but I don't see any reason why you would need to do that.
Now, these caps come off in here,
you do get some spare ones of these in case you lose them.
And these bolts that come with it
actually slide in this channel here.
That's then used in conjunction with this here.
So we'd actually have two of these bolts for each fitting,
so put two of them in there.
This then goes
on here like this, and if we just imagine this
tent pole as being the bars on our vehicle, on our car,
this would then clamp on there like that,
so we're attaching it.
So the four attachment points, or more,
if you've got three bars,
put this to the roof rails on your vehicle.
So that is how you attach it to your vehicle.
If you've got a basket or something different,
then you would just need to work out
some way to be able to attach these to that, there.
It won't fit a standard M8,
you're probably gonna have to be stuck with using
these bolts to slide it in there,
'cause that won't certainly slide it in.
Maybe a slightly smaller bolt will go,
but I'd suggest trying to use these,
'cause they've got the larger head on it,
to attach this to your roof setup.
Now, it's worth noting that these tents weigh 85 kilos,
plus the ladder, that's an external thing,
but the ladder can be stored inside the car.
Now, many cars, four wheel drives included,
will have 85 to 100-kilo roof load rating,
which means this, if you add roof racks in there as well,
is gonna be pushing the limits of that.
So just make sure you're aware of what your vehicle
can handle in terms of weight upon the roof.
Some dual cabs will have a canopy
that has a high rating, can be rated to a higher rating.
So just check on that before you grab this,
'cause they are heavy tents.
With that weight comes versatility of setup,
which I'm gonna show you now.
On this end, we've got a handle and the two latches,
and we've got the three heavy-duty hinges at the other end.
So we're gonna undo each of these latches.
Now, there is a locking feature
on these latches, too, worth noting,
so you can actually make the tent nice and secure.
Pull this forward,
that latch undoes.
Same on the other side here.
I need to just put a bit of weight down
to get that hook off,
and that will just sit there now, not doing anything.
So from here, we can lift this up,
and just inside the tent,
there is a strap that will be sitting here,
so we can use this to
sort of let it go up slowly, if we like.
It should be all right to go up by itself.
And then you've got this elastic strap here,
which is just designed to pull the fabric in
as much as it can, as you pack it away.
We pull that down and just put it in the channels
around the side here, underneath the brackets on the end,
so it sits out of the way,
and it's not gonna get in the way
of anything until we need it ready for pack-down.
Now, we need to set this end up here as well.
So already, I found it's easier to leave
your door open a little bit when you pack it up,
makes just pulling this fabric in a little bit easier,
and there's less sort of ballooning-out of the fabric
as you try and sort of pack it away.
So we undo this, (zipper hissing)
and reach inside
and we have
little pole here, and this section here.
Now, this pole here is actually attached.
There's a pivot point down here, it doesn't come off.
We just fold that up and push it as far as it will go,
to push this fabric out at the end here.
From here, we might need to crawl inside the tent.
And this extension pole,
it's just got a flick lever on there, goes...
There's a larger end and a smaller end.
That's the smaller end, that's the larger end.
So the larger end clips on the pole there,
smaller end just goes into the little bracket,
up near the roof there. (bracket thuds)
If we extend that out and then lock it into place
with this lever here,
that then holds that nice and secure.
So that's the tent setup, we're good to go.
Few other things we can do is,
open and close the doors that we like.
So we've got door on this side, door on that side.
with both meshed, solid windows.
Mesh and solid
panel on the end here,
skylight in the top here as well,
and we also have, on very top here, this flysheet,
which is set up now, it can stay on there.
It's actually sewn at the top here,
but we can actually undo this,
roll it up, (fabric rustles)
and there are tabs at the top there,
so we can roll that up
and keep it up out the way if we like.
We can't quite see,
but just underneath here at the top is a little loop,
so we can put this flysheet up and out the way.
And that allows plenty of breathability
or light to come through
the skylight in the top here.
And one of the benefits of these hard shell tents are
that you can actually pack it up with bedding inside.
Now, I've got really heavy-duty canvas bag here.
Now, it will be a little bit tighter to squash it down,
but you can fit this inside.
So I'll throw this in here and spread it out,
try and spread it out nice and flat in here,
so that you haven't got big, lumpy bits anywhere.
You may be able to squeeze a pillow in there as well.
Wanna be small pillows,
but larger pillows might make it a little bit tight.
I'm gonna put that in there and do these up
most of the way, (zipper hissing)
leaving it open in some points,
just to allow a bit of air to escape as I fold it up.
So I'll just leave that hanging there, like that.
Before we go too far, though,
we can't forget to take the poles out from inside here,
so I'll just take out
this little ridge pole that we've got here,
and I'm just gonna tuck it in,
just down at the end of the mattress there
and fold this back in, that can sit on top of our bedding,
(fabric rustling)
like so.
Maybe just put the bedding on top of it,
make sure it sits flat.
If you make sure it sits flat before you fold the tent away,
it's gonna be easier to fold it all down.
From here, I wanna make sure
we've got our strap accessible,
and we grab this elastic band,
this elastic strap around the side,
and put this up around the top of the tent here.
So that's gonna sort of pull all this in,
as much as it can, anyway,
as we try and pull this down.
Grab a strap here and pull this.
Now, a little bit of muscle
to get this down, grab the handle,
and slowly pull it down, letting all the air out.
And before you go too far,
it can be handy to have a second set of hands.
If I let this go now, it's gonna go back up again.
If I can hold this here while someone runs around
the edge and tucks the fabric in,
it makes it a bit easier, but what I need to do now,
is just push it down a little bit further,
until it gets to the point where
it's not gonna want to bounce up by itself.
And I'm just gonna run around the side of the tent here now,
and tuck the fabric inside the rubber seal,
all the way around the tent, both sides.
If we don't do this,
we can let dust and water inside the tent, for one thing.
And it's gonna be really hard to close it,
because that rubber seal is trying to push down
over the top of the heap of all the fabric.
So we're nearly there.
Come back around to the end here.
Now I'm able to put my weight on top of this at the moment,
because we haven't got it on top of a rooftop tent,
but you would normally be able to
hang on it or pull it down
to get some weight, to close it down.
Now, got that bedding inside,
so you'll need a little bit of muscle,
and it is gonna be a bit harder with one person,
it's actually much easier
if someone's sort of leaning on this,
and a second person is putting these latches in place,
because it kind of twists a little as
you lean on this, so I kind of need to
hold with one hand and latch with the other.
So there's that latch in place.
Just keep tucking the fabric in as you go.
And then I'll come to the other side here,
squash this one down,
and then push that latch in place.
Now, a little bit of muscle, too,
to get these latches done up.
Now, I'm not gonna say this is super easy,
with that bedding inside.
It is a little bit of muscle, but
it was doable by myself.
If you've got a second person just holding this down,
while the other person deals with the latches,
it's pretty straightforward to get it set up.
But you've got no pegs or anything to worry about,
no guy ropes.
It's just fold it down, squish it down,
do the latches up, and you're good to go.
That is how to set up, take down,
and an idea of how to instal
the Darche Ridgeback Hard Shell Rooftop tent.
If you've got any questions, let us know,
down in the comments below.
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(dramatic music)
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