Any one use Yakama .......

Advice
#1

“Landing Pads No 7” for your rack system?

and if so are you satisfied with them?

Cheers,

JackL

#2

Landing pads
Jack,

I have Landing Pads on the VUE and Gearwoman’s Saturn SW, don’t know the number, but both ours mount in Yakima tracks. Very happy with usage, allow quick and easy adjustment of span between bars. Rock solid mounting. Very easy mounting and dismounting of the crossbar+ control tower assemby. Gearwoman is most impressed with the ease of mounting compared to the Thule towers they replaced. Her Thule rack was never solid, the bars kept moving rearward when driving. They would only stop when the rear clips got to the end of the side windows. Mounting takes less than 5 minutes singlehanded for the Yakima Control Towers vs 30 minutes to mount the Thule towers.

Mounting the tracks with the factory supplied Plus Nuts blind fasteners was tricky. They give no track location in any Yakima literature for her car. I drilled 1/8’ test holes to make sure the fasteners would not be going into any roof beams. Had to move the first hole, naturally, and after that the rest were in open spans. The tracks spread out the fastener load over 54 inches, so we won’t see alot of torque like where the Landing Pads mount to the roof on a direct mount application.

No reported problems from my canoe shop friends who do them dailey on a lot of different models.

Just make sure the Landing pads are parallel, the control towers do not allow a lot of angular misalignment like the swivels do on the Yakima rain gutter towers.

See you in Old Forge in a week,

Bill

#3

Thanks Bill
Those are exactly the ones I am taking about, (the 7’s).

I have the 6’s on the fiberglass cap of my pick up and I think they are the most secure attachment on the market, and I want to put a set of the 7’s on the cab roof which has the headliner.

I want to pick your brain on how the nut works, (I am assuming like a toggle bolt, etc), when we get up there next week.



Cheers,

JackL

#4

Good Idea
I’ll throw a spare nut in the truck and show you how they expand. More like an industrial molly than a toggle. Kit comes with a tool to expand them using just a couple wrenches and the hex key included.

Give us something to talk about in our “free time”.

Bill

#5

I use them on my CRV
and am very satisfied.

#6

Thanks
That is what I am looking for.

I just need to see the expansion nut. I still can’t figure out how it works, but Bill posted above, he is going to let me take a look at one.



Cheers,

JackL