OK, So I'm a little annoyed.

I went out of my way to buy the Audi A3 base carrier bar system. Then I buy a nice box and I find out the bars can only hold 110lbs (the box weighs 55!) but worse, they are not compatible with the Audi Base carrier bars. Annoying. Anyway, I'm selling some racks if anyone wants them ($200).

So I'm looking into some Thule racks. I use the online fit guide and it recommends that I get 53" bars! That seems a little big to me. Does anyone have some Thule racks and can tell me the length of the bars?

Thanks!

 

check pm

 

 

Thanks JP,

I ended up ordering:

Thule Lock Cylinders (4 Pack) THU_544 $43.95
Thule RB53 Rapid Load Bars (Set of 2) THU_RB53 $103.95
Thule Rapid Traverse Foot Pack THU_480R $139.95
Thule Traverse Fit Kit 1417 THU_KIT1417 $59.95

No Fairing though, I thought I'd wait to see if the box lip cut out the noise.

Pretty decent prices for what I was getting I figured.

So I took a bit of a bath on the Audi racks. Oh well. Such is audi eh?

 

I went with the square LB50 since i wanted the bars to be flush with the A3's roof.

Get a fairing, it's worth it.

 

Yeah, I don't think you can get 50s rapid load bars.

I'm throwing a Boxter on top, I'll see how the noise is then. If it's bad I'll buy one local.

 

OK, Finally got the correct racks.

First: The Audi roof racks are crap. I am glad I got rid of them on craigslist.

Added the boxter. Pretty big but I didn't see the point of getting a smaller one really. Go big or go home - am I right?

OK, so opensky works fine with just the roof racks. The sunroof can only open to the first position (no slide) when the boxter is on. That doesn't really bother me because if there is a big plastic box on top, why have the sunroof open?

Anyway, a bit of a whistle (no fairing). This isn't something I plan on having on all the time so I may just deal with it. If it really bugs me I'll pick one up on the road trip.


Where I have it positioned I have about 1-2 inch clearance with the trunk wide open. I figure I may as well move it back, perhaps that'll help with some of the front vibration.

Thanks for the feedback!









This is what it looked like with the AUDI racks. Garbage.