Roof rack discussion

[dmention7]

I've been thinking about picking up a nice roof rack this spring, and I know at least a few people here are fairly knowledgeable about them... so here go a couple questions:

How easily can a given rack be swapped between two cars? I know there are custom fitting options on a lot of the nicer ones, but if possible I'd like to get one that we could swap between my car and whatever we end up buying for Nanami (will almost certainly be a compact sedan or hatchback)

I've got an okay idea how much they cost brand new, but how much would a quality rack tend to run used?

Eventually I'd like to end up with a couple mounts for hauling bikes, a canoe/kayak, and a cargo pod... any special considerations to make sure I'll have the flexibility I want?


Any other things a noob should know?

 

[Picklz]

Most of the ones I've looked at use a custom clip or other type of mount to secure them to the vehicle, now if the vehicle Nanami gets needs the same width cross poles as yours then you could likely get away with just getting a set of clips or whatever for her vehicle and call it good. The clips are relatively inexpensive compared to the whole rack setup.

You'd just (possibly) have to adjust where the towers on the end of the poles are mounted and swap clips.

When I bought mine I got it from http://www.orsracksdirect.com/ they had a deal on a last years model that made it pretty cheap compared to normal price. Not sure about used pricing.

 

[dmention7]

Thanks for the link--looks like they have some informative articles I'll have to look through.

Do mounts from different manufacturers generally work universally with racks, or are you locked into using gear all from the same mfg?

 

[Picklz]

I'm not really sure about that one, I have a yakima but haven't really seen or used the Thule or other racks at all. As long as the cross bars are the same diameter I imagine all the attachments and such would work fine between the different brands, but the actual towers and attachment clips and such I'd think you would want all the same brand.

 

[dmention7]

That would make sense. And yeah, I just meant using, say a Thule bike carrier with a Yakima base rack.

It kinda looks like the basic racks from most mfgs are somewhat interchangable, but once you move into the higher-end aerodynamic cross bars, there might be some issues.

Has anyone else used different brands and have a particular preference?

 

[Big Nate]

Be careful what you get. I know Josh had some denting issues with his rack. He would be a good contact for this. I have seen him use both a bike rack and a box.

 

[dmention7]

I was kinda hoping he'd chime in eventually, heh.

I guess I should've posted this in the chatbox, then we'd have 6 pages of discussion. lol

 

[micahlarson]

be careful about the ones that use foam pads as they can scratch the paint.

the only roof racks that I have had a good experience with was thule but that doens't mean there isn't other good stuff out there to be had.

my dad uses a small trailer to haul everything. I know you wouldn't want to put a trailer hitch on the msp but that would solve all of the problems of denting and paint scratching etc.