Mounting Canoes....

[McKinley]

Hey, I'm new here but looking as to where to tie a canoe to (front of car, rear of car). I have a 2006 Vibe. I don't think that I can even add a hitch to my car (there doesn't seem to be anywhere to put it). I could probably tie to front down onto the grill at the front, or just below the grill, but that doesn't seem very secure.Any help would be great. Thanks.

[joatmon]

Your vibe will take a hitch, there are some threaded holes in the frame underneath in the back. Search should turn up a number of hitch topics. At one point I made some tie down anchors for the back, with bolts to fit in two of those holes and bent S hooks. The bolts are metric threads, size M12 with 1.25 (fine) pitch. Up front I hooked up to some towing eye or another, can't remember without going out and looking again. This was my first canoe mount, the front/back ropes were really to keep the ends from moving side to side, I had it tied to the roof racks well enough it wasn't going to slide forward or back.

[McKinley]

Ahhh, okay I didn't know there were holes back there for a hitch. That should make life easier, I like your idea of the "S" hooks, a cheap alternative right now. If it didn't take a hitch I was thinking of using flay rope and tie it to the clips in the actual trunk. The front is where I was the most worried, there's not a lot there to attach on two besides the actual frame (which to me didn't look too sturdy).I'll do a search for hitches to see how much they run.Thanks a bunch.

[tribalman]

haha, thanks for asking this. i was going to ask the same question when i planed on taking my 15ft canoe and using my 04 vibe to haul it around. i was just planning on putting it on top and just trying to figure a way to tie it down. thanks for the advise joatmon