The end caps on my Thule load bars on two vehicles fall out from time to time, most especially in a car wash. They need to fit tighter somehow.
I don’t want to glue them in because I might want to remove them if I ever want to remove the bars from the towers.
Any idea of some sort of “grippifying” substance to put or paint on the end caps?
Maybe a really weak glue would work – one that would shear off with a bang on the end cap – but I don’t know what that would be.
Gasket Cement
There are a bunch of different kinds, but my first choice would be the non-hardening variety of “Form-a-Gasket”. Should do the trick.
not supposed to leave on
If using a drive through car wash you void all warranty and risk serious damage leaving any car rack on although people do it. If you lose the end caps at a do-it-yourself car wash then remove before hand and replace after like I do.
Any drive through car wash attendant will tell tales of Thule/Yakima parts found all over the place each week. So take em off!
Please forget car washes
It’s an irrelevant tangent that I needn’t have mentioned.
GBG, thanks for the gasket cement suggestion.
Black electricians tape
easy to take off, but can’t really tell that it’s on there either.
A little dab of silicone … EZ to grab
and pull off if / when you want.
Those would probably work with Yakima round bars, but Thule bars are square cross section.
I have probably lost dozens of the Thule caps over the 2 or 3 decades of multiple Thule racks I’ve owned. If I find one missing, I will tend to order a pack of 4 and keep them on hand until those run out. I’ve concluded that Thule designed them deliberately to fall off – continual income stream for them selling replacements! I’ve used electrical tape, Gorilla tape, flooring mastic and paint on FlexSeal to try to keep the little buggers intact but everything fails eventually.
Having clobbered myself on the head numerous times bumping into the rack ends on my short vehicles, I have considered modifying some tennis balls or other less painful objects to cap the ends. Just another project to add to the endless list…