Reeves, Debbie (Debbie) wrote: > > I'm with Dave on this one. I purchased mine 12/98. How wonderful of the > company to recommend that we consumers fix their product. By the way, by > stripping off the plastic coating, several people in our group have had > their bars rust. > > Debbie Reeves I often have wondered why people, when faced with round vs. square, continue to get the round ones, i.e. Yakimas as opposed to Thules. The square bars can't roll and they also seem to tighten better inside the towers, at least from my own experience and observation of others. (Also, a square bar is stronger than a round one, I believe, of the same dimensions and wall thickness. At least that is true when comparing round vs. square stringers in folding kayaks. Arguably the toughest frames are of the latter type, i.e. boats like the Feathercraft Short Touring and their K-2 which have square long tubes as opposed to the round ones of their other models.) >From what I have seen of the roof rack bars, both Thule and Yakima pretty much match up in price, offer similar specialized accessories and an array of kits for fitting to different cars. The only difference that I detected early on, and this may have changed, is that the kayak saddles on the Thules were harder to change width adjustments on than with the Yakima ones. I once was renting and borrowing hardshells as well as putting assembled foldables of various models on my Thule rack and using the saddles. The adjustments to accomodate different widths of boats were a pain in the butt; the Yakima saddles looked easier. Perhaps this has changed for the Thule ones. My solution was to retire the saddles (I eventually sent them gratis to Jack Martin last year when he was looking to buy a pair; perhaps that is why he doesn't pick on me :-)) and I switched over to the windsurfer type pads that fit on Thule or Yakima bars and this eliminated any need for adjustment for different widths. My experience with these pads and their doing no damage to any boat is part of my reason for confidence in the portable roof pad setup I am using now with rental cars. If anything, those pads are even better than the windsurfer ones in that they have a bit of shape to them and will support more of a kayak's curved surface. Their are two widths. The smaller one looks idea for kayaks with sharper V hulls; the wider one for more rounded bottoms or wider kayaks such as doubles and foldable singles. The wider one also has a wider opening at the bottom which looks like will fit easily around factory roof racks and so could be used with them...we did discuss this last week I think. ralph diaz -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ralph Diaz . . . Folding Kayaker newsletter PO Box 0754, New York, NY 10024 Tel: 212-724-5069; E-mail: rdiaz_at_ix.netcom.com "Where's your sea kayak?"----"It's in the bag." ----------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Oct 26 1999 - 07:12:35 PDT
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