GenVibe - Community for Pontiac Vibe Enthusiasts

Alright, I got my Thule racks setup on my new Vibe! (hopefully this is the right place to post this, apologies if it isn't)

Having a full, large set of racks on my car is a must or me. I do a lot of canoeing, mountain biking, and skiing and being able to carry stuff on the car makes for happy passengers. I have used this Thule rack with minor modifications on many vehicles over the past 7 years or so, and was very glad to continue using it.

The Vibe was a bit of a challenge to get worked out for mounting, but not impossible. I pieced together a bit of info from a couple different threads on here and various (luckily not out of date) information from some retailers pages. I'll list the details of what I used here in case others want to replicate.

Here is a picture of the car with the full racks on it:



For the front I used a pair of Thule 400xt aero feet with the fitkit #2119. Listed as the fitkit for for the Toyota Matrix/Pontiac vibe. The kit comes with front and back fit kit pieces. The shorter clamps go in the front. I had the aero feet already, but you can find them on eBay/Amazon pretty easily. I found the fitkit (which is discontinued), brand new for $25 on ebay.

For the back I used two crossroad 450 feet, these mount directly to the factory rack on the Vibe. again I found these on eBay for really cheap--$45 for the pair (they were missing the covers, but replacement parts for almost all Thule products are easy to get and fairly inexpensive. I've had very good luck using the site etrailer to get parts). You can also buy the feet new in a two pack that goes by the item number 4502 and coats $120.

These both attach to the 65" square bars that I already have.

Altogether I spent about $90 to get everything. If you wanted to recreate this from scratch with brand new parts it would be quite expensive, but through some careful eBay hunting and maybe local Craigslist parsing for used crossbars I bet you could reproduce this pretty easily.

Here is picture of the Vibe loaded up with my old Gazelle canoe. Handled the boat like a dream. Drove 3+ hours like this, including some 65 mph highway time and felt totally stable the whole time.



This does leave the front bar about 1in higher from level then the back bar, but functionally I don't think this will be an issue at all. If anyone wants detailed pictures of the feet installed let me know.

Looks good!

I just bought a used, complete Yakima rack off ebay for $170 shipped. It was on another Vibe the seller said, so it's exactly what I need for mine. I do need to invest another $10 (incl. shipping) for a spare key, however. I only got one with it.

It came Friday but I left out for the weekend. I did unbox it and looked at it, and it looks right. I'll get around to trying it on the car soon.

When I was eyeing the Vibe as a car to buy, I had hoped that the factory rack was enough to carry a big roof box (or basket) but I guessed wrong. It's almost just a decorative rack unless you put a cargo bag, or maybe a cargo basket. But since I think I want a Thule or Yakima box, I opted for a full rack so I can get as big/long of a box as I want.

Nice, that sounds like a steal for a fully functional rack setup that you know will fit your car!

I had the same hope when I got this car, the factory rack seems like a pretty badly designed after thought though. I quickly realized that with the locations of the stock cross bars being so far back that I would be unable to open the back door at all with either my mountain bike or my skis on top of the car -- not ideal!

Did someone say decorative? I've found the factory rack to be pretty darn useful. It fits this ginormous Sears X-Cargo perfectly. Although, I suppose a longer, lower profile box might have issues, but I bet you'd be surprised.

I probably wouldn't try hauling a canoe on them, but I am going to be in the market for a pair of bike mounts.

I did say ALMOST decorative.

Yes there are boxes like the X-Cargo series that will fit but I wanted something less tall.

The bars I got with mine are 58" wide, so they stick out a bit from the car. Initially I hoped they made a typo and meant 48" but nope, they meant 58". They don't stick out anymore than the side mirrors, but they are still a slight head injury hazard, at least when empty right now.

On the other hand, it looks like I can put a somewhat narrow box and still have room to put a single kayak rack. It's crappy that the very narrow ones around 27" are over 7ft long. it would look awful having that much overhang over the windshield. The ones closer to 6ft long are a bit wider, 33" to 35", depending on the make and model of the box. I'll probably have to go with one of those instead if I want to be able to carry a single kayak too.

Here's my rack, but without the wind deflector installed yet:

Before I got the factory bars, I had used these "Hackima" bars and whacked my head on them more than a few times.
They were quite functional, but ugly as hell. They were my DIY attempt and were definitely a matter of function over form. I used them for a couple roadtrips to haul cargo on the roof.

Yikes, an empty rack creates a LOT of noise at highways speed, at least on mine. I thought it was my tires yesterday but today I reached up and felt the ceiling at 50-60mph and I could feel it vibrating from the front rack. It's on tight, but maybe not as tight as it should be?

BenWA wrote:Yikes, an empty rack creates a LOT of noise at highways speed, at least on mine. I thought it was my tires yesterday but today I reached up and felt the ceiling at 50-60mph and I could feel it vibrating from the front rack. It's on tight, but maybe not as tight as it should be?

From my experience the fairing helps a lot with that. I also always tighten my racks down quite a bit, enough so that when I grab the rack and move it the car should move with it.

WindHarvester wrote:

BenWA wrote:Yikes, an empty rack creates a LOT of noise at highways speed, at least on mine. I thought it was my tires yesterday but today I reached up and felt the ceiling at 50-60mph and I could feel it vibrating from the front rack. It's on tight, but maybe not as tight as it should be?

From my experience the fairing helps a lot with that. I also always tighten my racks down quite a bit, enough so that when I grab the rack and move it the car should move with it.

I had it down that tight but it was still very noisy with roof vibrations when empty. It must have been the way the wind was hitting the roof. I bought and installed a used Yakima box yesterday and there is LESS noise now. Still some, but not the horrible roof vibration sound. It seems to be impossible to have the box and fairing on at the same time because of how they install.