Mike Buckley wrote:

On a personal basis, my sea boat cost me well over a months salary - no way
am I going to entrust something so precious to me to either a blow-up tube
or a few bits of foam. I'm not going to risk any damage to my car either so
for me anyway there's no alterantive to a proper set-up.

I bought Thule bars 5 years ago and they've been on three cars since - the
KCS J's were bought 10 years ago and are still fine. Seems a good bit of
value to me anyway. Now I dont want to get flamed and I realise I'm a new
boy here and that a whole lot of folk have advised that inflaters, or foam,
or whaever will be fine so I'll leave you to make your own decision.

Disliking Thule due to two bad design examples (VW polo and a Nissan
something), I bought a Halfords "Mont Blanc" set of roofrails-mounted
roofracks.

They've already lasted me for several cars now, although I did exchange
the crossbars for an extra wide crossbar three cars ago.

I always use straps to tie boats to the roofrack, and I have yet to see
one that has been strapped to my roof come off, even when doing high
speed (160+km/h ~100+mph) emergency braking on the German highway.

Wilko

P.S. Granted, I did have one boat fly off the roof at one time, because
it wasn't tied on at all... At least it stayed on for several kilometres
of winding roads through the hills, before finally flying off after I
went down one hill at around 100 km/h ~60mph :-)

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://wilko.webzone.ru/