Anybody have any suggestions for a roof mounted mountain bike rack? I'd like to see photo's of fit's with racks installed if anybody has any too.

I'm leaning Thule so far but haven't made any firm decisions.


-Thanks!

 

I had two Yakimas on my last Fit and liked them. I like the look of the silver Thule bars more, but not the supports.

 

I've had yakimas and thules... They are both good. The thules seem to be a little quieter while the Yakimas seem to be a little cheaper (cost-wise).

Skip the Fairing on the front, it hurts fuel economy. for the yakimas, get windjammers (makes the empty part of the round bars more tear-drop shaped and cuts down on noise)

Current bar is a Yak.

~SB

 

I just put a Thule on mine last week. Went with a 44" fairing because I saw some pics of 38" fairings on here and didn't like them. For attachments, I am using 2 Thule big mouth bike attachments. Looks very good. For fuel economy, I was getting 35 combined driving before the rack. I am now getting 31.5 combined driving.

The fairing makes it noticeably quieter and it looks much nicer; however, I plan to take the whole rack off if I do a trip that involves more than a few hours of interstate driving.

I can take some pics and post them if you want

 

That sounds exactly like the system i was pricing. Pics would be great! Thanks Have you carried bikes yet? How secure did they feel?

 

I actually haven't carried bikes on the fit yet! Hoping to get out some next week, when we get some warmer weather. But I have used the big mouth on prior cars, and it is more secure than you would expect. The bikes don't seem to sway very much going around turns, and it is really nice to not have to take the front wheel off as you would have to with a fork mount.

One thing to note is that I'm 5'7" and I have to stand on my tiptoes to reach the claw of the big mouth. So if somebody was really short I could foresee that being an inconvenience.

The feet I have are 480 traverse feet. The 44" fairing extends wide enough to cover about 3/4 of the foot itself, so it seems like a pretty ideal fit, even though Thule recommends the 38".

I grabbed used, black square bars on craigslist for 40 bucks. I like that they're uniform/standard, and you can more easily get other attachments (kayak, car-top carrier) to fit them than you can the thule aero bars, which are not square.

My car is a base, so I don't think it is as attractive as some of the Sport pictures I've seen, but the rack itself looks great. I'll snap some pics and put them up tomorrow.

 

Oh... and you mentioned that you're pricing it. I really do encourage you to check craigslist, ebay, amazon.com used. Particularly if you don't care if your rack looks not brand new (which it won't for long, anyways).

total for 2 50" bars, 2 big mouth attachments, 1 kayak attachment, the 480 feet, the fit kit for the feet, the fairing, and the locks... I think I spent about $350, but I shopped around over a period of a month of 2.

 

Completely agree with this. I've had a Yakima for about 5 years on a couple different cars. I haven't put it on my Fit yet as I've only had this car for 2 months, and I haven't bought the clips for it yet.

As for security, though, I've carried two mountain bikes many times, one about 26 lbs, and the other about 24, with no issues. I use the Viper fork mount, and I have no fears of them coming off. You'd have to really carve a corner irresponsibly to make them come off. My road bike weighs a lot less and makes less noise when turning from a stop, but once you're rolling you don't think about it at all. On long trips I just check the clamps at fuel-ups to make sure it's all still snug. I've never had them loosen.

Also, the fairing really does cut down the noise. Hearing a howl on your roof is worse than dropping a couple MPGs for the few long trips you might take with the rack.

 

yeah, where the cabin is pretty loud without racks i was thinking of adding the fairing. Also i think racks with fairings just look meaner!

 

One way I've dealt with the sound produced by air flowing over the round Yakima crossbars is to wrap a long bungee around the bar. Or a web strap works, too. Simply disrupts the airflow that produces the noise.

Will

 

The fairing does make a difference on style but is most certainly what is killing your fuel economy. I ran mine with and without and found the difference to be about 3mpg. 1 more MPG gained without the rack at all.

I have the WindJammers for my Yakima. They cost about the same as the Fairing for a set of 4 and they all but eliminate the howl associated with the air rushing around the bar. that said, you can't disagree with the fact that the car looks better with the fairing. For Me, the WindJammers worked great

I've run (not on the FIT but with the current rack) Two Mountain bikes (full upright mounts) and a Thule Sidekick cargo box all at once. this was on My integra but I ran the Cargo box on the FIT for more than a week last spring. Fully Loaded on the highway with the fairing doing just below 80mph, with the cargo box, I averaged 29mpg on the highway. Without the fairing, it likely would have been 32-33mpg. I would normally average about 36-38 on that trip.

~SB

 

here is a picture of mine from last weekend's bike ride.



with 2 bikes on top, 2 on the back, 3 passengers, a couple of redline starts because of oncoming traffic and about 100 miles at 70-80MPH avg MPG was right at round 27.