I'm thinking of buying a Pontiac Vibe to use as a shuttle vehicle. It is
station wagon like, but it has a roof rack covering only on the rear half of
the roofline. Yakima's website suggests a Q Tower mounted front bar, and a
Low Rider rear bar, mounted to the factory rack. Has anyone used this
combination? Is it level and above any sun roof? Did you just remove the
factory antenna, located at the rear center of roof?

Yakima stipulates a 75 pound weight limit. I thought that that was the limit
of the factory rack. With nominally half the weight on the Q Towers and
clips instead, shouldn't it be able to carry upwards of one hundred pounds?
I'd like to put two 16' canoes on the Yakima rack. I'd use front and rear
tie offs, and I'd like to stick with my current Yakima hardware..

Is its sister car, the Toyota Matrix, any more Yakima friendly?

Thanks

Jim

James Dieball wrote:

[deletia]

Yakima stipulates a 75 pound weight limit. I thought that that was the limit
of the factory rack. With nominally half the weight on the Q Towers and
clips instead, shouldn't it be able to carry upwards of one hundred pounds?

Yakima rates any rack attached to the factory rack at the factory rack's specs,
I'm sure. They are terribly conservative in their load ratings, probably for
liability reasons.

Remember: engineers routinely derate specs, which means a rack speced at 75 lbs
will most likely carry 100 lbs easily. Probably even 200 lbs, but I'd not take
it out on the highway at 70MPH unless you had a bow and possibly a stern line on
the load, yano?

John Kuthe...

James Dieball wrote:
I'm thinking of buying a Pontiac Vibe to use as a shuttle vehicle. It is
station wagon like, but it has a roof rack covering only on the rear half of
the roofline. Yakima's website suggests a Q Tower mounted front bar, and a
Low Rider rear bar, mounted to the factory rack. Has anyone used this
combination?
I'd like to put two 16' canoes on the Yakima rack. I'd use front and rear
tie offs, and I'd like to stick with my current Yakima hardware.

If you're going to carry long boats, you have no choice but to go with
this configuration. Using just the factory rack would put the load bars
too close together and way too far back. You'd have trouble keeping the
boats secure and probably have horrendous handling in a crosswind. With
a bar over the front doors, you'll at least have reasonable spacing and
be able to get the boats much closer to center.

Is its sister car, the Toyota Matrix, any more Yakima friendly?

The Matrix is more "rack friendly" - regardless of brand - because it
doesn't have the wimpy factory rack of the Vibe. It's a nicer looking
car, too, IMO.