Roof rack, roof bar question

brandfreak

Hi all

I am soon taking delivery of a Ventana ECDM full suss tandem :P The only way to carry this thing will be on a foor rack (Pendle here I come). I will need to buy roof bars for my car. There seems to be 2 types :- square and aero. Obviously the aero are supposed to be be more aerodynamic, I'm not sure which way to go. How easy are these bars to get on and off the car? Do you leave them permanently on? My plan is to be loading up the tandem most every weekend and getting out. Should I leave the bars in place? I will have to remove the roof rack for the bike because of it's shape, so I will have to fix that on every week.

What does everyone who uses roof racks/bars do? Some help needed.

Thanks all

sofaboy73

It depends how your going to connect it to your car. If you've got proper roof rails, Thule do a foot mounting system which is effectively foot clamps that you tighten up with a pull out handle by hand (it's more technical than that and very secure). With these it only takes a few minutes to put on / take off the whole rack system. If you've got a car with these new fangled low profile roof rails (as I have) you then normally have to use a foot clamp system that you have to do up will allen keys. Because this takes about 15-20 minutes to fit and it's a ball ache, I just leave mine on all the time for convenience. The down side being that it increases wind noise when driving and does effect fuel efficiency (not as much as you might think though and again, all dependent on the car you have). Regards square or aero bars, can't see there being any significant difference in fuel, possibly a bit on noise, but the big advantage if aero bars is they have a slots the racks attach to by sliding in, rather than a clamp around the square bar, therefore can take the racks off very quickly (useful if you have different racks or want to minimise some of the drag by just leaving the bars on). Hope that makes some form of sense

danlikesbikes

Depends on your car.

Most roof systems have a foot that is either permanently (pretty much) attached to the roof & the bars simply go across and come off quite easily. Or some cars you can use a foot attachment that locks onto your roof into the black rail strip that runs along both sides & typically have a push down point that the foot sits into and is locked in place.

Taking the rails on and off is quite easy to do depending on the system you go for as some are a lot easier than others.

waby1234

To remove the roof rack on my car is a 5 minute job - it screws into anchor points underneath the black strips. It's a great system, very solid and secure. I don't like leaving the rack on because its a bit ugly and will marginally impact mpg and wind noise.

PashleyRider

My Thule fits on my Saab using 4x5mm allen bolts and takes all of a few minutes to fit/remove by myself. I have the square tube version which is fine (only cost me a tenner with 2 bike racks!). I like the look of the aero bars but I would only get them if I was going to leave my roofs bars on all the time, which is something I try to avoid. I modified my racks to fork mount as the arm wouldn't reach my downtube and I wanted it to be as secure as possible, so I'm not sure if they will go on aero bars as they use that track mounting system