After installing my roof rack I was disappointed to find out that all four feet of the fairing sit directly on the sunroof. This pretty much makes the sunroof useless except for the tilt function.

I searched the forums and only found people fixing this by moving the mounts of the front bar forward enough so the fairing rests on the roof. Before installation I was willing to do this until I saw how much the roof curves as you move the front bar forward. I wasn't happy with the stability of mounting it further forward than Yakima recommends so I secured it where it belongs leaving the fairing in direct contact with the sunroof.

All the prior Yakima rack posts I found from searching were years ago and I'm sure someone on here has come up with a clever modification to extend the fairing forward without moving the front bar. Yakima used to make fairing extenders but to my knowledge they don't anymore and the old ones don't work with the new fairings.

Please post pics if you've solved this problem and any other insights would be great. Thanks in advance!

I said f*ck it to the roof rack and bought a 1 1/4" hidden hitch that bolts to spare tire and tow hook and use a bike carrier on the back. not a fan of roof racks..

That's definitely a nice option for anyone carrying only bikes. I went the roof rack route because I already had most of the gear from a previous vehicle and I carry kayaks too.

i'm not sure what the new brackets look like on the newer fairings (thule has the same issue) but you could try and fabricate your own extenders with some aluminum strips of sorts from home depot. measure them out and cut them to the length you need and bend them, based on where you want the fairing to sit while using the existing brackets to attach to the crossbar.

my brother had a left over old school thule fairing and we custom fabbed the extensions, re-used the existing brackets that attach to the cross bar, and had the fairing sit on the weather stripping of the windshield rather than on the paint. had my thule roof rack on my TL for 6+ years. no issues, until a tree branch fell on the rack and the car. no worries, the car survived with minor damage.

Thanks for the reply and this is similar to what I was thinking. I pictured three ways to do it:

1. Keep the bracket mounted to the bar and extend the fairing off the bracket.
2. Keep the bracket attached to the fairing and have the extension between the bar and the fairing bracket.
3. Custom fabricate a whole new bracket that is longer.

I think option three is the way to go and I was just throwing the idea out to the 'Zine community to confirm it.

Thanks again for the input and sorry to hear about the tree branch incident!

I've thought about doing the same thing, i'm interested to see how you do it

my friend showed me this simple bike rack using Sea Suckers Bike rack.






its the same technology used in the Mission impossible movies, where Tom Cruise is scaling up a building without any harnesses

That is a clever solution especially because there are no permanent mounts.

5M - I'll post pics when I come up with something.

Do you have any pictures of the faring sitting on the sunroof? When i am using my yakima rack the faring's pads are right on the edge of the sunroof and the car's roof. I basically use that area as a guide on where to put the rack when installing. Not sure what the recommended spot is for the rack, is there a certain distance from the windshield to the bar?

I am still able to open the sunroof.

I'll try to post pics of my existing set up later but haven't done that on this forum yet so will have to figure it out.

The installation measurement for the front bar was given on Yakima's website as the distance between the top of the windshield and the front of the tower as 11". When I mounted the front bar using this 11" measurement it left the four feet of the fairing about 3" back from the front of the sunroof.

So you must be mounting the front bar 3" forward from where I am. Not really the end of the world since it's working for you. Another advantage to your forward set up is that it increases the distance between the front and rear bar. Besides the sunroof thing this thread is about, I don't like how close the bars are to each other when I mounted everything the way Yakima recommends.

Maybe I'll end up moving the front bar forward like you and skipping the whole fabricated fairing extension idea. Which is exactly the point of this thread...to learn from other people's experience. I read some threads from a long time ago where people talked about shifting the bar forward but I couldn't find any mention of whether that was successful. Sounds like it's working for you and that's good enough for me! Thanks for your reply!

These are the dimensions recommended on Yakima's site. My post above is referencing the M2 measurement of 11" which leaves the front feet of the fairing 3" back on the sunroof.

You should just move it forward. That is what I did to mine, and it clears the sunroof. Still sturdy as heck and I think it looks good. If you custom fabricate one, it is going to take time and effort for fabrication, paint, and then who knows how it is really going to look. You might end up putting a lot of time into it, and it might not even come out the way you want. I suggest you just move it forward and give it a try

actually when my brother did mine...it' didn't take that long...maybe 30-45 minutes. i had no rust on mine since it was aluminum. if anything the wingnuts had a little rust in the 6.5 yrs of the rack attached to the car.

This is just a re-post of the image that didn't work from my 7/13 post.

Yes, it worked!!