Said bars in use with raptor aero rack.

 

Looks awesome, thanks for the write up. I have a couple of questions:

1. When looking at various sites, they call for the K368 fit kit for "Naked Roof-Fixed Point" installs (for something like the 08 STi with the mount points that would effectively be the same as with Krazy's brackets)

Just wondering what made you go with the 323 fit kit, and what the difference is if you know?

2. Where you have the m6 x 1.0 50mm set screw going into the bracket, did you use lock-tite along with the nut? And I assume that the feet on the fit kit just have a hidden nut to secure it down onto that set screw as opposed to the yakima "landing pad" style feet that have a bolt that go down into the bracket.

Thanks again for the writeup. I was going to go with the standard yakima setup until I saw your thread and another on Nabisco where you posted your setup. This seems like it will look a lot cleaner on my PSM car.

 

I actually figured out the answer to my questions... the pdf of the fit guide lists 368 so I assumed that was the one that bolts into the factory fixed mount points (like on the 2008) but when looking at the pics on another site, it looks more like it hooks under that factory mount.

368:

323:

 

Hey, sorry I didn't see a reply to this post.

I like the "permanent" kit better because it is actually bolted on using screws (through rain gutter of course) rather than having the feet go under the rubber seals on the windows. I think it is more robust and most of the feet is actually just touching the rain gutter, not the paint.

If you need more pictures of the rack tower with the covers off I can post them here.

 

Oh another thing... one great thing with this rack is, if you want to take the cross bars off (taking to track, not carrying anything whatever), you can do so without having to remove the whole assembly. In fact, the base is still low profile but enough to hide the ugly screws which otherwise would protrude through the rain gutters.

Here is with just the cross bars removed.

The cross bars are held by two pins on each base.

Here is my crossbars with bike rack still on it

 

Officially my favorite set up Mav! Well done sir! Awesome!

 

sweet, thanks for the response!

I ordered 50mm grub screws and jam nuts to attach to Krazy's brackets (just got them all in the mail and they seem like they'll be nice and sturdy!)

I was thinking of making the holes in the rain gutter large enough that I could remove the screws and throw a hole plug in there if I ever wanted to remove the rack. I'll probably just end up never removing but as you pointed out, it doesn't look bad just having the smart foot setup on there if you were to remove the rest of the rack.

One last question: How is the raptor aero working out for you? I'll be carrying 3 bikes on my rack and before I place my order for the whispbar, I'm still trying to decide between the raptor aero, Inno 382 (or possibly 388) and/or something like the Yakima Front Loader.

thanks
z

 

I have both both Raptor Aero and Front loader. Front loader is definitely much more secure but also more expensive and much heavier. Notice that Front loader also does not come with the "aero bar" adapter kit (or whatever they are called) so that is an extra $30-40 on top of the price on a Front loader. I'd say Front loader is slightly easier to load the bike but not by much.

I personally think you'd be just fine with Raptor Aero. I personally don't like removing my front wheel so that is the best solution. If you are okay with removing front wheel, then look into Rocky mounts - they make some of the most sleekest looking bike mounts.

 

Well I ended up going with the Whispbar HD base kit (T16) + 323 fit kit and 3 Front loaders.

I was under the impression that the yak FrontLoader was a universal fit and goes right onto the aerobars. (I believe the HighRoller—slightly more expensive—was the one that required the mighty mount kits) I guess I could be wrong but I sure hope not. I've spent a lot of coin for this setup so I really don't want to kick down anything more!!

I think overall I would have been fine with the Raptor Aero but it didn't look like you could secure it to the base rack though. I didn't want to get it stolen.

And the Rocky Mounts looks very nice, but I definitely don't want to have to take the front wheels off. I'll be taking a long road trip this summer with the two kids and I need all the trunk space I can get for other clothes/gear.

 

Sorry you are right, mine was the High roller not front loader.

Have fun with the set up and post pics! Agreed with not taking front wheel off.. I have the rack for a reason!

 

Thanks! I'll post some pics once installed! (shipped already so it should be here Friday)

BTW - ORS (onion river sports) was having their usual 10% off all yakima stuff sale. (pretty much all yak dealers had this same sale going on)

PLUS, literally just before I ordered, I saw a banner ad on Nabisco that said "ORS first time buyers use coupon code 'first10' to take an additional 10% off your entire order.

Saved me an extra $97 last minute! :tup:

 

I sold my old Whispbar (S16-throughbar) with A3, so I ended up buying another one. I thought I wanted S5 but I looked it up on Whispbar website and they recommended me S4 instead.

I think I like the flush / cleaner look. Doesn't change the fact that I have 3 x roof vane wings now :lol:

 

Any idea what the weight limit is?

 

I can't speak for the whispbar, but on a snowboarding trip I had a couple hundred pounds of gear on my rack and it held up really well. I think it boils down to weigh distribution.

 

Man those racks look so good! Both sets do. Which set do you feel was more quiet? Or were they about the same? I will mostly be carrying surfboards/snowboards so do you feel like the s16 would be better? Appreciate the advice and thanks for the info on your post. Very helpful for what I'm going to be doing!

 

So here's a couple of pics of my setup finally. I couldn't be happier! It's rock solid on there, thanks to Krazy's brackets.

Setup is basically the same as Mav's original through bar setup in the OP.

Only difference is I got the T-16 HD version. I feel like I could haul hundreds of pounds of lumber on top of there if I needed to. It probably wasn't necessary, but I figured I'd be hauling 3 bikes +. (I'm thinking about getting a yakima LoadWarrior basket too and mounting the bike racks on top of that!)

Here are some pics of just the bare rack though:

 

^looks good!!!

 

So here is my thing...

I am dead set on the fact that I need a rack. What I'll be using it for is surfboards (usually 2) and snowboards. I would also like the option to put on one of the load warrior baskets or maybe one of the enclosed travel cases. I like the look of the closed end rack the best, (S4). Does that setup restrict you on width enough to really notice? I just try to envision putting down two sets of surfboard pads side by side and I wonder if the through bar would give more room. I mean the extra rack space outside of the mount is what, <1"?

Opinions are appreciated.

 

Huge thanks to this thread!!

I ordered my Whispbar S4, 323 kit and "Krazy" brackets today.

This thread was a huge help, thank you for the help!

 

^ nice! Post up some pics of the finished product!!

and BTW - you can mount a load warrior onto the whispbar and then other carriers on top of the basket. (on the integrated load bars)

Although vans, I would definitely say there's an extra foot total of usable rack space with the through bar in certain situations. Zoom in on my pic and you can see, not sure if that would come in handy or not with trying to carry 2 surfboards side by side.

Of course, you could always get this 'double decker' style and have no worries:

 

I'm going to post this here (copy/paste from a nabisco thread)
Just my 2-cents/tips on the install, mainly around measuring for where to drill the hole in the raingutter.

Installed!! (Whispbar HD)

This thread and a couple others really helped me out, thanks dasnowman! (ProRack Whisp Bar Custom Install with Pics 02-07 Impreza - NASIOC)

Also this thread... (thanks jsavage)
this thread... (thanks maverickar15)
and this thead (thanks krazy)

Just a couple of install notes to make things easier when it comes to drilling the holes in the rain gutter.

I used Krazy's custom made brackets to mount the rack. The rack itself is fairly heavy (being the HD version) plus 3 fairly heavy bike carriers, plus 3 bikes, I didn't want to take any chances of tapping the stock brackets. It probably would hold, especially if you reinforce with a nut under/over but I feel much better about having them mounted on these.

It feels ridiculously solid!

On to cutting the holes in the rain gutter. I noticed a lot of people's responses were that they were way off and had to redrill and had oval holes so I thought about it to figure the best way to measure where to drill.


Once the brackets were in place, I put a piece of painters tape on the roof, along with a ruler. I centered an inch mark right over the hole, and then marked 1" away from the center on each side of the rain gutter.

measuring:

marks 1" above and below:

Then I cut away the tape in the middle and reinstalled the rain gutter temporarily to drill. I simply put the ruler back on, and marked the spot 1" from each mark on the tape, heated a nail with a lighter and put a tiny starter mark. *I drilled it out first with a really small bit to get a precise pilot hole started, and then drilled again with 1/4" bit.

As you can see, it worked out nicely... on the money!!

Just another couple of notes before I post installed pics;

I put a very small piece of rubber in the bottom of the hole of the bracket. That way I could thread the grub screw that cueballsi posted—and by the way, thanks for the part numbers from mcmaster... made it very easy to go to their site, find them and order—and when they screws bottomed out on the piece of rubber, it kind of spread out and wedged in there, holding it very firmly.

I ended up ordering the jam nuts to go on the grub screw under the rain gutter trim but not using them. A couple of reasons for that.

1. If I wanted to remove the rack for some reason, I am able to just take out the grub screws without having to remove the trim. All I have to do is put 1/4" black plug in the holes and you'll barely notice.

2. (and probably more importantly) You'll notice that the grub screws aren't completely vertical after installing. The front one is at a slight angle forward and the rear one is at a slight angle rearward.

They look like this: \___/ Which means that the distance between the screws at the top is further than the distance at the bottom, where the holes are drilled for.

My holes in the rain gutter were so precise that I couldn't put the gutter trim back on with all 4 posts in place. I ended up having to remove the rear two, install the rain gutter and then thread them back after the trim was in place.

That's about all I can add to the already well documented install from everyone else, but hopefully that will help someone.

Installed pics coming up soon!

 

WOW thank you so much for posting that!! That is exactly what I was hoping for!! I would really like to completely remove the feet of the rack if I choose to and just put rubber holes in the open holes in the rain gutter. This is really awesome thank you. My rack should be here tomorrow.

BTW....amazingly fast shipping on the brackets from krazy. Thanks!!!!

 

Glad to help!

Between those tips and the rest of the install notes in this thread and the few others that I linked to, you should have no problem.

I think the main issue a lot of people had was not drilling the holes in the rain gutters exactly which is why I thought for a while about the best way to measure for them.

(my brackets from Krazy came super quickly too, which gave me a bunch of days to think about it while I ordered the rack itself and waited for it to come)

Good luck!

 

do all of the roof racks require all this work for the rain gutters because i can not use one of the clip on racks due to having the jdm rain visors

 

You don't want to use the clip-on style anyways, ask Krazy. He's posted how his got stolen with all of his gear when a their simply put a prybar under it and popped the clips off.

But yes, you can either modify the brackets that are under the rain gutter (drill and tap threads yourself) or buy the beefy brackets from Krazy.

*unless you have an '08+ which I believe all have pre-threaded brackets under the rain gutter, with an easy access door.

 

So I got my interior totally apart and I changed the brackets. I did the best I could to clean the old stuff off and I put on my new brackets.

Did you folks do any testing for water leaks? I am so concerned with this chance, it has been freaking me out. I think I will put a bit more black silicone around the perimeter of the brackets but otherwise there isn't much that can be done.

Did you guys have any issues?

 

Any idea's how I'd be able to secure a set of wheels/tires on the rack? I'm looking for alternatives to a trailer to haul my R's for autox.

 

Perfect solution as my last rack was stolen from my garage and it looks clean as well. I am sure that there could be some plastic caps manufactured so it covers up the mounting bracket.

 

Interesting that the S4 setup seems to be the Flush version that fits with this mod. pretty cool.

Also tagging for later.