Hello everyone,

I wanted to share a video I made recently for anyone looking to safely remove the plastic covers on their 4Runner factory roof racks, in the video I'm doing this on a 4th Gen 4Runner but it looks like the covers are pretty much the same on the 5th Gen.

There's very little information out there on how to do this without breaking the cover, when I first tried to remove them unfortunately I ended up breaking the first one. i searched online for any information on the best way to remove the covers without breaking them but didn't see a dedicated video about it on YouTube however I did read an old post buried a few pages deep in a thread on one of the 4Runner forums about a method that worked. So when I removed the last three covers I decided to make a YouTube video to demonstrate that method and hopefully prevent other people from breaking the clips or tabs on their covers like I did on the first one.

Apply a little heat. When I did this I used a hair dryer to soften up the plastic some and make it a bit more pliable without damaging it. I then went very, very slowly with my trim removal tool. It was also a hot day which I think helped.