Once again…factory racks are not designed to take as much weight as people put on them. These racks are mostly designed for luggage and such to sit on the roof itself with the cross bars merely keeping the load from sliding front to back. There is little upward pull on the rack as with a kayak. Don’t be fooled by rack systems that advertise they will hold 200 pounds. The system might, but the factory rack isn’t likely to.
If you use factory racks, check the owners manual or have your mechanic look up the load rating in your car’s service manual. Then add up the weight of the rack system you’re using and your kayaks. My Jeep Commander - a large SUV that can tow 3500 pounds - has a factory rack load limit of only 120 pounds! That’s barely enough for two sea kayaks and the mounts. Racks on smaller SUVs and sedans are going to have lower limits.
Bow line or not, if your rack is loaded beyond factory specifications your insurance company and auto manufacturer will use that against you.
@KayakerBee I am not sure who the above is directed at but of course one should know the limit of their factory racks when they buy a car. I disagree that racks on all smaller SUVs and sedans will have a lower limit than was on your Jeep. That is the category of vehicle I have been buying for quite a while - older station wagons usually grouped in the same bucket as sedans. Yes there are 90 pound weight limits out there. There are also 120 or so weight limits in that group. I can’t speak for why the Jeep product might have the same limit as some smaller vehicles.
As to the incident reported by catfish228, if you can tell whether the third party racks were mounted directly into the underlying slot where a factor rack would sit, or onto a factory rack, you are doing better than me. I and my husband drove Ford/Mercury products for quite a while until they stopped making the station wagons. I know that Thule and Yakima used to make towers specifically intended for those slots. I scan’t see any reason in their post to assume the Ford Escape in question had factory rails.
I’ve got hood loops, for both hood and hatch, for my bow/stern tie downs, but have found myself wondering, would it be bad to tie off to the crossbars on top of my car? I’m not an engineer, so I’m not sure how the forces would differentiate, if at all. Does anyone do this? I’m transporting two 12’ kayaks at 70 miles an hour for anywhere from 30 to 120 minutes at a time on top of a 4 door VW Rabbit.
I personally think that the forces would be better tied to the crossbars. But… what is the purpose of the bow and stern lines? One of reason you should use them is to protect against catastrophic failure, and one of those failures is the roof rack becoming detached from your vehicle. Its never happened to me but I’m pretty sure it has happened to someone in this thread.
@string said:
I use bow tie downs as extra insurance against spearing someone in a wreck.
This is what I had to follow on the way home today. No tie downs, no nothing, not even a strap holding them in. Took the photo when we were stopped because of road construction. Gave that truck a half mile before I began following.
I regard the bow and any stern lines as a visual way to tell if things are coming loose and protection against rack failure. Tying off to anything on top of the roof would fail to work for either of those purposes.
I was following a pickup two days ago with a similar load to what Rookie encountered: 4 shortie rec boats stacked in the bed with the tailgate down and only “secured” with a single bungie cord passed over the topmost boats. Gave it a VERY wide berth. We have way more steep hills and bumpy roads here in SW PA than there are in MI where Rookie drives. I did not want to be behind that load on one of our 30% grade Belgian Block surface streets.
