I'm going to add some info on a little update project I undertook over the last week or so that Mr FlagRS will recognize....
I wanted to abandon the factory cross bar roof racks in favor of something much more stout and I don't like the Yakima Landing Pad method for a variety of reasons, so semi-inspired by another fellow over on the Outback forum, I decided to fashion some replacement mounts for directly attaching after market bars to the factory hard points. Previously I had my cargo basket attached to the factory rails and then Q-Towers and round bars attached to the top rails of the cargo basket (yep, they grab just fine and are very solid), with the kayak rack on the round bars. It worked just fine and felt reasonable, but the factory bars liked to flex with as much crap as I like to put up top and it never "felt" really warm and fuzzy. That combined with how tall of that was has always bugged me, so off to the laboratory.
That is my adapter block.
The basic idea here was to remove the factory cross rails completely and fashion a mount that would attach to the factory tie down points. I don't think the way that Yakima decided to go with the Landing Pads makes sense. I'm sure it does to the marketing people, but to me they chose the weakest way of attaching to the car body when they could have chosen the much better tie down pads with positive beefy bolts (2) at every corner. Instead their system friction fits into two of the factory rail holes and attaches with a single screw at the other two (one of which is only an M6). I'm not a fan and the fact that it's all taller than it needs to be doesn't help.
So I went out into the world to find a suitable, inexpensive and easy way to attach something round to something square and came up with these motorcycle handlebar clamps that do a lovely job with a minimum of modification. These particular ones are very cheap because they are discontinued, so I got them for $5 a pair. The round is a little over sized (1-3/8" as opposed to 1-1/8" for the Yak bars) but I decided I liked having an 1/8" hard rubber gasket in there anyway for a variety of reasons, so all's well that ends well. They are essentially a prototype so I just wanted them to be functional and I can worry about pretty later once the theory is proved out.
I did some counter-bore work and ran them under my orbital sander for style points.
This picture shows my block installed right next to the crappy little factory cross bar mounting point that Yakima uses for the Landing Pad system. One M6 shoulder bolt!
I chose to leave the factory tie down points in place under my adapter blocks because I like having those there.
With the bike rack installed outboard of the attachment points....nice to reach.
Cargo basket and the bike rack.
It is rock solid, way better than the factory bars, a very "permanent" attachment and really not a big deal to remove. You can reach the lower mounting bolts without having to dismantle the upper bits, so the whole thing can come off as a unit with 8 hex head bolts. It's nice and low, I could actually shave another 1/2" off the bottom of the blocks but I don't see the point and I think a little bit of clearance is a good thing.
This prototype worked so well that I'm already thinking about a V2.0 that would be milled out of a single aluminum block...
Something like this....which is what Yakima should be selling us in my opinion.
