Thursday 13 May 2010

Extending the Roof Bars

I've been wondering about a better way to carry my sea kayak on the car for some time. My roof bars are in a fixed position, only just over 2 feet apart. They are wide aero bars, and also have a slight curve in them. The latter can be of no practical use at all and I think is just to make them follow the roof line. The car, a Honda CRV, is also quite high, making J bars a non-starter. All this makes getting an 18 foot boat up and down a bit of a nightmare.
With my old plastic sea boat it wasn't a problem using Thule kayak bars, which are fine for river boats, but don't seem so secure with a bigger composite boat.
After a bit of thought I asked Kari-tek if they could make me a bolt on extension. They've just come up with the goods.





It looks a lot more secure for the boat, and it'll be much easier to load it over the back of the car. It's a fiddle to attach, and I may get back to them to see if they could make a bracket to fit into the channels on the bars. The uprights in the pictures are the Thule ones, which don't need taken off to fit it.

2 comments:

  1. What an excellent idea! Would make loading from the rear much easier on our Chev Tracker. Will be looking into it from our side of the "water". Cheers, Duncan.

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  2. Excellent! They look easy to load the boat on to single handed from the back of the car.
    I have a well scratched patch on the roof of my old Renault Scenic.

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