Car Topping

T

Telenator

New Member
Good afternoon,

I am looking into to age old subject of car topping.

I have some ideas I would like experianced folks views on.

I have a Nissan Murano with the roof rack and cross beams. the cross beams are not
flat accross but rounded.

I have in mind just using thick wooden poles 65" long and putting the Colie Sails 54"
http://www.coliesail.com/dnt.html rack pads on them and tying down the padded polls
to the roof rack and cross beams so they can't move any direction (easy).

I will leave the poles farther out on one side for the spars.

Any thoughts?
 
Re: Car Toping

If you've already got a roof rack on your car, Thule or Yakima ought to make some sort of adapter than can attach their standard crossbars to your roof rack. I think they would be a lot more secure then what you describe. Whatever you do, also tie the bow and stern of the boat to your bumpers.
 
Re: Car Toping

Sounds like you are looking for the low cost solution, go with 2"x4" boards, staple or tack on some old carpeting. (unless you already own the rack pads)

The 2x4 will give you more surface area contact on both the boat and the Murano existing rack when you tie everything on.


The tying on of your own crossbars to the factory rack will work, there are some methods that you can use that make it a little more secure (such as drilling thru the crossbar and running the tie down lines thru the holes)
 
Re: Car Toping

I like the 2x4 carpet idea. I have some thick shag in a roll.

I had thought about a 2x4 but don't want to look too ghetto. The pads are ony $50 and look nice.
I think 1" thick wood poles will be plenty strong for short trips and I can round the ends for head
protection and paint them black to look trick.

I live in annapolis and just need to go about 20min. to the water.
 
I don't know how the Murano racks compare with the Xterra racks, but they make these cool mount points for Xterras ( http://tinyurl.com/6y43gg ) that you could probably get some use out of.

I thought about car topping with my Xterra but I think I'd kill myself trying to get a boat up there... it has about 12" of lift :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top