Roof Rack Fairing (another roof rack question!)

i tried searching...and could not find the answer.

Does anyone know if there is a fairing available for our factory rack? Most p5s with fairings i've seen on this board are using a different rack all in all. Has anyone modded a Yakima or Thule rack fairing to work with our cars? Or maybe one from another car? I've seen some suby wagons with fairings attatched to their stock crossbars...thanks in advance guys!

**EDIT****
3/16/06
the solution:

1 38" Yakima Fairing (for round bars)
2 Pieces of PVC Piping; 18" each
1 coupling to connect pipes
3/4 inch foam tubing(for water heaters)
2 intake hose clamps

I did not want to get a full yakima rack since I already had the factory one but I really like the look and function of the Yakima wind fairing....so this is what i decided to do...it came out better than i thought. camera phone pics:







now i got a clean looking factory rack that doesnt whistle..fitment looks perfect..

what do u guys think?!

do you have pics of what you're taking about?

I thinkhe is talking about the wind deflector that you can put on the front crossbar. Thule and Yakima have them available for their aftermarket models. Couldn't you just fab something up?? Doubt it would take much to do so. Doubt they are available as well.

If you have a sunroof I wouldnt suggest doing it, our rack sit alot farther back than subys. Your wind flraing would have to be pretty big, I dont think these would fit...
http://www.a1-autoracks.com/yakima-wind-fairings.html
http://www.a1-autoracks.com/thule-wind-fairings.html

From what I have been unable to find, I think it'll have to be fabbed or modified.

yeah, our racks start too far back to use a thule or yakima fairing. I suppose you could do it, but it'd start in the middle of your roof, instead of at the top of the windshield. And forget it completely if you have moon roof (like me). I'm just going to get a moon roof wind deflector and hope that helps out a little bit.

I'll take a pic of mine when I get time. You can, but you have to have the bikes facing "backwards") so that the fairing will sit on the glass (you don't want to put it on the paint).

Dimitrios said:

I'll take a pic of mine when I get time. You can, but you have to have the bikes facing "backwards") so that the fairing will sit on the glass (you don't want to put it on the paint).

Click to expand...

can i see? i really wanna get this done, i dont have a moon roof

verseoneMP5 said:

can i see? i really wanna get this done, i dont have a moon roof

Click to expand...

It's about that time of year, so I need to put my rack back on. Hopefully this weekend...

Canecreekfreak said:

yeah, our racks start too far back to use a thule or yakima fairing. I suppose you could do it, but it'd start in the middle of your roof, instead of at the top of the windshield. And forget it completely if you have moon roof (like me). I'm just going to get a moon roof wind deflector and hope that helps out a little bit.

Click to expand...

you can use it with a moon roof. i installed a yakima rack with the faring on a bmw 530 wag at work. the fairing sat right on the center of the moon roof. its rigid so it had to problem with roof operation.

So what happens when you want to drive around with the moon roof open? I would think having the fairing sitting in the middle of your open roof would only create more noise, plus you'd lose some rigidity in the fairing, plus you'd have the bottom of the fairing scrape against the glass when you opened and closed the moon roof. Never mind looking silly, IMO. None of which I'd want to do, but that's just me. (boom07) If you don't have a moon roof, then I guess you only have to worry about looking silly (IMO) by having a fairing in the middle of your roof.
Not attacking anyone here, just pointing out things I thought of when considering a fairing for my ride. (thumb)

bump for the solution

verseoneMP5 said:

3/16/06
the solution:

Click to expand...

Looks like it should work.

Is there anything besides friction from the hose clamps keeping the foam tube plus faring from rotating up and over your front cross bar? It appears that the force generated by the faring should be down but odd things can happen in a wind stream and if it is instead generating lift that would tend to rotate it up, torquing it around the cross bar. I'm guessing that once it starts to move in that direction it's going to keep going.

Other things you might want to consider for your current set up:

1. The hose clamps look like they will eventually scrape the paint off the back edge of your crossbar. Is there something between them and the bar to prevent that?

2. The black handle shaped pieces on top on both sides stick up above the faring and apparently into the airstream. In one of the pictures they also don't look lined up with the flow, but in another picture they do. Can you pull off that piece and just use a washer and nut? Paint those black and they'd be almost invisible.

3. When the whole thing gets wet in the rain are any of the parts held together by friction going to slip? What happens if you go some place really cold or really hot, do the pieces still hold together or does the difference in thermal expansion cause a problem?


Here's an alternative design that came to mind while reading this thread. I have not built it but think it should work. It's based on a U shaped PVC tube frame under the existing rack. That is, like this, as viewed from the top of the car, with the front to the left:


    ==================
  +----||----------||--
  |    ||          ||
  |    ||          ||
  |    ||          ||
  +----||----------||--
    ==================


where - and | are the PVC pipes and = and || are the P5's roof rack. Then you could attach the two long PVC pipes to the cross bars with nonmetallic straps. To keep it from slipping back and forth use PVC fittings or larger diameter pipe to make a sort of notch for the P5's rack cross bars to fit in. Then put the faring onto the transverse part of the PVC pipe and all the connections could then be below the top of the faring. Cap all the PVC pipe to keep things neat and avoid having a pipe organ when the wind blows across an open pipe. The two long PVC pipes would have to be a fairly large diameter to be stiff enough to hold the faring still.

thanks for the input..as for the bar slipping and rotating, it cant happen. I'm using the Rockymounts bike trays and the round pvc pipe is strapped to the crossbar right in front of it..its hard to explain but it basically will prevent the bar from slipping back or rotating....there is a lil bit of foam under the hose clamps to prevent scratching...

verseoneMP5 said:

as for the bar slipping and rotating, it cant happen. I'm using the Rockymounts bike trays and the round pvc pipe is strapped to the crossbar right in front of it..its hard to explain but it basically will prevent the bar from slipping back or rotating

Click to expand...

I suspect what you've got will work just fine but let's play devil's advocate for a minute. Imagine that there is lift from the faring at 70mph (if it's down force it may ding the roof but nothing worse will happen). As you drive along the vibration and the faring forces slowly break down the foam next to the PVC pipe (because it's rotating up and down .5 degrees from these forces). At some point the foam crumbles enough, the friction holding the PVC pipe to the foam becomes too low, and the loaded faring causes the PVC pipe to rotate up and around until it bangs into something, probably the bike in the tray.

So what keeps the PVC pipe from rotating within the foam sleeve?
I mean other than the friction from the two pipe clamps.

It looks like your pipe isn't capped. So you could PVC cement on a 90 elbow and a short bit of the same diameter pipe so that the (new) ends would rest on your roof rails. Or at least it looks like that can be done. At that point the PVC pipe can't rotate since there's a big lever arm on each end keeping it from doing so.

One other point. There seems to be about a 1" gap between the bottom of the faring and the roof of the car. Can you eliminate or at least reduce that? If no air can go under the faring than the odds of it generating lift go way down. If there's no lift, then there's no need to do anything more to keep the pipe from rotating.

Having the fairing touching your paint will scuff it for sure. The "old style" Thule fairing...I think it was the 555 used to rest on the top of the windshield. The newer style...I forget the part number rests on your paint and when you drive the fairing vibrates against the paint and the debris trapped in between there scuffs your paint. They provide little foam feet but they fall off pretty quick. Trust me, I worked in a bike/snowboard shop for five years.

the fairing mounts are not over the foam, i notched the foam so the mounts are actually straight on the bar. it is locked in pretty tight. also, there is a 1inch gap between the fairing and the roof but thats how the fairing is. there are these little feet with foam attatched on the bottom of the fairing. they barely touch the roof therefore the paint will not scratch at all...i drove for a while on a windy valley road last night with no probs..also on the freeway between 75-80... seems to be very solid..nothing i cant fix or adjust tho

If you are running bike trays, there is a very easy and clean solution...

Get two sets of the factory rack adapters that you would normally use to hold the rear of the tray to the crossbar. Use these at both the front and rear stock P5 crossbars. Go to your local bike/ski shop and ask them if they have any used/extra Thule or Yakima crossbars that you can buy from them (sometimes they may just kick you one down). Mount the crossbar through the standard mount on the front of the bike trays, and mount your fairing to that. by sliding the trays forward, you can get the fairing closer to the windshield, just don't go too far forward as it may put too much weight from the bikes too far in front of the stock P5 crossbar. I've seen this done on a few cars, and you have to take a second look before you even realize that the forward crossbar isn't really mounted to anything. No more hose clamps and foam, very clean.