Roof rack leave on or take off.

The Continental Op

While in the UK last week I got around to buying a half decent roof rack for my old 2010 Ford Focus. Fitted it today and its quite a faff to put on and take off.

So the question is do I leave it on or take it off. The reason I'm thinking of leaving it is that my mileage in this country is very low maybe 30 miles a week occasionally 60 and the reason for having it is to use with a roof box travelling to and from the UK. Obviously I won't be leaving the roof box on.

It would be really great to have a car with built in rails but that isn't going to happen any time soon.

colm_mcm

How often a year do you need it?

Tbh it’ll only be noticeable if you do higher speed journeys.

The Continental Op

colm_mcm wrote: »

How often a year do you need it?

Depends and leaving it on might alter the way I use it.

Normally travel to the UK at least every 8 weeks sometimes more often. Roof box handy.

Then at home hardly use the car but often put the trailer on to get timber (both firewood and DIY material). With the roof rack I might not always use the trailer for picking up timber.

colm_mcm

I’d leave it on full time so

The Continental Op

colm_mcm wrote: »

I’d leave it on full time so

I agree with you. Just you know how old ideas keep nagging at you

Grolschevik

Leave it on for a while, see how it goes.
If it's getting the use and not annoying you in other ways, keep it on.
If it's not, and does, then don't.

passatman86

I had one on my daily and i have to say i really liked it. I didnt want to take it off lol

The Continental Op

It got annoying. First longer trip on a main road and the noise became annoying. Much better than some other cheap roof racks I've had but at 60 kph the sort of wiring noise started at 80 kph it was the very noticable. So took it off. Removing doesn't take to long its putting it back that will take longer.

dudley72

I have just installed one on car, plan was to leave on. Then I was driving at the weekend on motorway, 1 hour to location and 1 hour back. The whoosing noise the entire journey was annoying so I think I will bite the bullet and take off/on.

It is ony at high speed you have the sound so if you are not going on motorways it will probably make zero difference.

For my car it already has rails, so it just slots onto the top of them. I think the Focus has the holes in roof you have to push into etc? so probably a bit more work to it

Mango Joe

Why don't you do what I did last Summer?

Take the bars off.

Carefully put the fixing bolts into a plastic bag and tape it to the bars.

Fail to notice that the plastic has become brittle, frayed to nothing and the 4 bolts have gone to 4 separate places unknown.

Spend hours searching....find 3.....Spend hours searching....find final one under miraculous circumstances....

• I seem to manage some variation of this every time I badly need something from storage....(Arghhhh)

The Continental Op

My current old focus has 4 plastic plates that need removing then 4 allen key headed bolts need to go in after you have taken off the 4 plastic covering plates on the mounts (which need replacing afterwards). The worst part is getting the bolts in squarely and manipulating a very small allen key in under the bars. The saving grace is the bolts go through a rubber mount which stops them dropping out in storage (hopefully).