McDonalds and garages
You need a front tie down not a rear one if you have good straps. The front tie down it to remind you that you have boats so you don’t drive under anything and ruin your rack and your vehicle roof.
or your garage door trim
(what can I say? I secure my kayak very, very well)
The OP…
doesn’t care what works on your (JackL’s) trucks, he’s asking about HIS BMW. Any rack system can fail, bow and stern tiedowns are very cheap insurance.
As Carlos Castaneda put it …
– Last Updated: Feb-16-11 10:25 AM EST –
and to paraphrase someone else's online post about it:
"One exercise [to heighten your awareness] is to drive in an area that has a very low ceiling, like a parking garage [with kayaks strapped on top of your vehicle], to be able to "feel" the roof tickling the top of your aura. It's a subtle feeling, and you have to pay attention. It's not like your body feels a sensation, it's something else. "
Yup, something entirely "else" - the cockpit coaming scraping against the garage door -;(
LOL!
So THAT’S what that gouging noise was (my aura getting tickled!)
The OP can do what he pleases
just as I can post what I please.
It is always enjoyable to stir the likes of you up.
jack L
"The OP can do what he pleases"
That sounds like great advice!
Perhaps he really didn’t want an intelligent answer, he just wanted to hear YOUR anti-tiedown rant???
Right…
– Last Updated: Feb-16-11 4:15 PM EST –
Both Audi and BMW have tow points. If you look on your front and rear bumpers, you'll find square pop-outs and inside them a screw hole for the Giant Eye Bolt that came with your car.
As stated, you will need to buy another, either from your BMW dealership or from an on-line BMW parts shop; there are tons of them. I use www.bavauto.com, which is in NH and close by.
We always (unless we're driving
I make hood-loops
that are bolted tothe frame under the hood.
Why?
Because at 75mph, that headwind wants to push my boat off the roof and when I slam on the brakes, the boat wants to keep going forward.
And the highway patrol guy looking for a last ticket or in a bad mood can interpret ‘improperly tied-down load’ anyway he wants!
In formal and correct use of the terms…
…, “persons” would be used. I still remember when I was a very young kid and heard Walter Cronkite or Chet Huntley refer to the casualties of a tornado or other distaster as “persons” and thought surely that must be a mistake in grammar. Of course they were right, and nowadsys when a big-name TV news reporter uses the word “persons” when referring to those affected by some event I don’t even notice, and I’m sure that I’d have not ever “re-remembered” that if not for this subject coming up.
Why dont you buy a trailer?
No paint worries - just install a hitch if it can pull a trailer.
We will never travel without bow and stern lines - Even if you are not so concerned about damage to your boats, if they fly off - you “absolutely” need to be concerned about the other drivers around you on the road. This is not to be taken lightly. It can Kill.
Roof racks may look sturdy - how are they attached? a few small attachment points with sometimes severe wind forces? This is a very real concern as “racks” with boats attached can fly off. As can boats from their cradles. A few ropes takes only a few minutes once you have it figured out where to attach and we have always found spots on various vehicles. We even use bow and stern lines when we put ours on the trailer for the same reason - protecting the other drivers - that’s the most important reason, next to protecting your investments in boats.
Achieving opposing angles
– Last Updated: Feb-16-11 5:07 PM EST –
I'm glad to see someone else recognize the need for this. Talking canoes for a moment, the usual bow and stern line set up would be /-----/ (with the dashes being your car, and the front of the car being on the left). However, simply by installing your rear tie-downs to a thwart instead of to the pointy end of the boat you can achieve /------\. The same could surely be done with a kayak. One could make padded hooks to attach the rear tie-downs to the cockpit rim, or simply attach the rear tie-downs to a loop of rope surrounding the hull behind the cockpit, as long as a seperate rope were provided which connected that loop to either the cockpit rim or the bow handle of the boat to prevent the loop from sliding back toward the stern. In any case, the solution would be easy if on put their mind to it.
Not too worried
On the boats we have, both plastic and fiberglass, the bow and stern lines get attached to the 1/4" loop of polyester line that goes right through the boat, about 2-inches back from the ends of the boat. That line is rated to about 1500 pounds, and the hole it runs through is as strong as the boat itself. I don’t think those attachment points could get any stronger, at least on our boats.
This may be different on different designs of boats.
Ha!
That is friggin hilarious. Just last Saturday I drove into a low ceiling parking garage with a new Atlantis Thule box on my roof. There was less than a foot to spare and I cringed as I drove in and said to my wife, “Ow! I can FEEL that.”
Stories
Is there any evidence that using tie downs prevents anything. I imagine 75 pounds of kayak and rack flapping around a car traveling at 60 mph and wonder how many seconds it would take for the whole thing to go flying off. Or cause the carrying car to go off the road because of the freaked out driver.
I certainly wouldn’t tell someone not to use them. But their use seems only intuitively helpful.
Jordan
Here ya go
– Last Updated: Feb-16-11 9:02 PM EST –
When I was in high school, my dad and I were heading home from an early-morning fishing trip, and somehow a distraction as we loaded up must have broken the routine because we never attached the two main tie-downs that clamped the boat down against the cross bars. We didn't realize our mistake until after about 10 minutes of driving 50 to 55 mph when my dad saw in his side mirror that the boat was overhanging the left end of the rear crossbar by more than a foot. The only thing keeping the boat on the roof was a single rope from the bow of the boat to the front bumper of the van. I think it's a safe bet that driving 55 mph with a 4-foot-wide, aluminum jon boat on the roof generates far more wind resistance than going 65 or 70 mph with a skinny, pointy-ended kayak. Since our car was a blunt-nosed full-size van, the updraft blasting into the open bow of a big aluminum boat would be pretty strong, so that front tie-down did its job. Without that single rope attached at the front, the boat would have back-flipped up and off the roof of the car while our speed was still pretty slow, and we never would have had the chance to marvel at how nicely that single rope kept the boat in place once up to highway speed (any of you who have felt the force of a 30-mph wind getting into the open top of a large canoe that you were carrying by yourself or loading on your car's roof will believe that, for sure).
I think that it might be too much expect bow and stern tie-downs to keep your boats on the roof if the rack fails because your vehicle collides with something heavy while at high speed (in that case, even if your ropes are strong enough, the attachment points on the boat may not be), but I'm certain that bow and stern tie-downs will keep things where they belong when only working against the force of the slipstream generated at highway speed, even if plowing into a substantial headwind. All you have to do is take note of those times you've seen something like a mattress tied to the roof of a car with just a handful of binder twine (yeah, sometimes something breaks in such a case and the cargo flies off, but I'm just saying take note of the fact that it often "works"). Still, for front and rear tie-downs to really do their job, they must be oriented relative to each other so that they can't go slack as a result of the boats shifting position, something I've mentioned many times in the past, and is a subject mentioned by 'mtuguy' elsewhere in this thread. On the other hand, if all you are fighting is the slipstream, a pair of front tie-downs may be enough to keep your boats centered while preventing them from being blown off for a long enough time for you to gently slow down and stop. My observation of a single front tie-down doing exactly that for about 10 miles of driving at highway speed suggests that's a reasonable expectation.
You mean like this?
http://www.paddlinginstructor.com/blog/safety/item/1535-school-bus-driver-narrowly-misses-flying-kayak.html
BMW Rack
I don’t know about the Thule 480, but the Thule 753 is BMW specific and bolts directly through the rack and into the roof structure of the car. For all of the people talking about the rack coming off the car, if that happens, you have bigger problems than worrying about front and rear tie downs. If a force is strong enough to rip out 4 screws from the roof of your car, it is strong enough to break bow and stern lines. Now I do recommend the bow and stern lines to prevent the kayak from buffeting side to side and loosening up the main straps if you are going over 50 mph. With my surfski, there is no way to attach a line to the nose or tail. I just run a line over the top and let friction hold it down. Like I said, it’s only preventing the side to side movement. The main straps are what keeps the kayak on the roof.
An’ ah’ had de pleasoor o’…
– Last Updated: Feb-17-11 12:46 PM EST –
plastic weldin' two 'yaks of a member o' aar club dat had come off her car along wit de whole Thule rack while doin' 60 mph on a highway 4 years back. Luckily de cars near her waar able ta git out o' de way o' de flyin' 'yaks, which skidded down de road fer hundreds o' feet. No bow an' stoyn tiedows. Now she uses dem!
How's dat one?
FE
You guys ever see what happens
when a front tie down comes off and the carrying car runs over it ?