Michael Daly wrote:
On 3-Apr-2006, "(PeteCresswell)" wrote:

Gutters were a bad design back in the day and a bad design now - noise and
wind resistance with no real advantage.

There are still some advantages of rain gutters. The most useful is
that a raingutter along the lenght of a vehicel roofline allows the
crossbars to be positioned anywhere, and not just where at factory
predetermined locations.

One of the few vehicle types that still has raingutters is full sized
vans. Ford, Chevy and Dodge vans all still have raingutters.

On a long roofline like a van having raingutters is wonderful. I use a
triple crossbar rack system, with the front and rear crossbars at the
far ends of the roofline (which makes it easier to solo load and unload
boats). The middle crossbar can be loosened and slid forward or
backward to better acommodate boats of different lengths.

Nah, I still like the adavantages of raingutters, and still use (and
perfer) a variety of DIY'ed Quick and Easy roof racks if raingutters
areavailable.