On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 12:42:36PM -0400, Steve Cramer wrote: > At 10:23 AM 10/24/02 -0500, Patrick Maun wrote: >> She drives one of those fancy new Beetles, if anyone has any tips for >> car-topping a boat on one of these let me know. < .. snip .. > > Actually, your biggest problem may be getting adequate rack spacing. You > only have one door to work with. I don't know about the New Beetle specifically, but for most 2-door cars Yakima offers a product that extends the spacing between the bars called the "Q Stretch Kit". It's easier to just look it up on their website (http://www.yakima.com), as there is a pretty clear sketch of it, than to explain here how it works. With the product, the limiting factor becomes not the single door, but the length of the roof itself. On car models that are available as 2- or 4-door versions (not applicable to the New Beetle, alas), you can usually get the bar spacing on the 2-door within a few inches of that of the 4-door. The only slight annoyance I've run into with it is that you need to crank down on clips at the rear of the door a little harder than you would with a 4-door, in order to get the towers on the rear bar to stay down tight against the roof (again, look at the picture on Yakima's site, and the reason why is pretty obvious). But I've never lost a boat, dented the roof, or even scratched up the car's paint when removing or installing the rack. Just make sure the car top and rack tower pads are clean when you install the rack. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Oct 24 2002 - 12:12:04 PDT
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