65" or 78" Roof Rack Bar for Cartopping?

tkjazzer

Member
Hello,

I'm going to buy a Thule roof rack for my car and don't know which size roof rack bar to buy. I know the beam is about 4.5 feet (54 inches). Is 5 inches on each side enough to lash down the 3 Sticks and the sail? I'm thinking about getting a PVC to put the rolled sail into.

65" or 78"?

I have a car that isn't too wide, so I will be sticking out past the edge of the car. That is legal as long as I am in my lane right?

Tom
 
5" on each side is really not enough. However, 10" on one side will work fine, (just slide the bars to one side). The boat will still be centered on the car and you'll have room on one side to strap down the spars. I put my "overhang" on the drivers side so I can keep an eye on the spars and don't run into anything. Works great.
 
Safety idea - If you buy overhanging bars, put bright green tennis balls on the ends of the bars when empty so you don't whack somebody. For visibility and padding.
 
Thanks,
I never would have thought to overhang the driver's side. I thought the other side would have been safer, but I guess your way makes more sense.

You said to push the bars to one side... does this mean you use the 65" and them push them all the way over to get the 10" or do you buy the 78" and still push them over to one side?

Tom
 
PVC Pipes and the Environment

I hear PVC pipes aren't too great for the environment. Something about how they cannot be recycled and how they hurt the water supply. I can't think of alternative right now though. Anyone got an easy environmentally friendly solution to avoiding PVC to make a pipe to hold my sail?

Tom
 
Re: pads

I used two layers of hardware store pipe insulation on my Yakima bars. I made it thicker away from the center to account for the arch of the deck. Kayak / canoe stores also have shaped bar pads, but they don't fit a Laser deck all that well.

Don't know enough about PVC - it's sewer and drain pipe, generally not water supply. Anything "vinyl" is not good environmentally, but if you're keeping it a long time and not throwing it away, that's better.
 
Thule sells a "surfboard" or "windsurf board" pad. I was thinking those might not be wide enough. Has anyone seen those or used those?
 
My 78" Thule bars are about twenty years old now. The black plastic has been peeling for at least ten years. The end caps have been replaced a couple times. The poles have been used on a regular pickup truck, 2 full sized vans, 3 extended cab pickup trucks, a Celica, a Corolla, an Astro, a couple Suburbans, a Stanza wagon, and the top of a camper trailer. Needless to say I have purchased a lot of custom Thule feet which I mostly still have and probably don not even know whcih is which.
The best padding we lucked into was meant as a safety pad for a roll away basketball goal. We found it on clearance at a sports store. It is a durable canvas / vinyl coated cloth with grommets so the cover can be laced around the pipe . The kit came with padding and everything. Because the basketball pipes are thicker than the Thule racks, we bought a foam campers pad from the sleeping bag section of the same sports store and wound iyt on the tubes before adding pad from the kit and the canvas cover.. Our padding, put on for a 2000 regatta in Chicago is still OK but the Canvas is about to either wear through or die from the exposure to sun.

We only padded between the rack feet. We centered the poles most of the time. On the pickup we had a full sized bed and only the top sections ended up tied to the racks. IMportant: If you travel a lot with lasers, the spray in liner is better than the drop in plastic pickup bed liner because the bottom section will just drop inside the bed and allow the tailgate to shut. If you have a pickup with a short bed...you are an idiot and I have no hope for you or your stupid yuppie fashion statement but no function vehicle.
With the vans we simply put all the poles inside the vehicle or carried them on a trailer.

With the small cars we either put the poles on the trailer with the other 2 boats.

On the rare occasion when I could not find anyone else who was smart enough to sail in a regatta rather than stay home and watch re runs of Lizzie Maguire and I took a tiny vehicle, I tied the set of spars I planned to use on the driver side and the spares on the passenger side. That way I could get in and out of the car at the regatta site without whacking my head all weekend.
 
If you are unsure as to which thule products will fit your car you can go to www.thule.com on their website they have a section where you enter your vehicle make model and year, and then the site tells you which product you need. It doesn't get any easier. If you dont want to by the rack system new, just note what the site recommends and then go search e-bay or your local bike or surf shop, that should turn up a good used rack system.
 

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