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Can anyone recommend a roof rack? It's for an 07 Honda jazz to carry 2 bikes. Looking at Thule (160ish for the bars alone) is there anything else worth considering?
I've strayed from Thule once in about 20 years. Bought some Atera bars, which despite using the supplied torque allen key, I managed to snap two of the pins.
Roofbox.co.uk were excellent, and they quickly replaced the bars with more expensive Thule ones (for the same price). No torque allen key supplied, but the equivalent pins in the Thule ones are double the diameter.
So, in my limited experience, buy from Roofbox.co.uk and stick with Thule
Bought some Atera bars, which despite using the supplied torque allen key, I managed to snap two of the pins.
Funnily enough I had a set of those for my old car. The torque Allen key was a load of crap. It was 5Nm give or take 50Nm I couldn't get it to click by hand. You would 100% break the rack if you used it.
Back to Thule now. Good quality and excellent spares availability. Lock match is cool too, makes life easier.
Also roofbox.co.uk are great, top support if needed
Square or oval bars? Only I’m giving both to the scrap man. Saying that they might be too long for a jazz. Do you know what size it needs?
Plenty of quality Thule stuff on ebay for far far less than RRP and you can build a set realtively easily. worst case you have to buy the car-specific fitting kit but use the standard feet and bars
I ended up with Thule on our Peugeot 5008. There were other slightly cheaper alternatives arrive but they required a lot of effort and dismantling to attach to the car. The Thule ones take about 5 minutes to fit with a single Allen key.
Something worth checking if you're going to be taking them on and off.
Ok cool, good advice thanks. I'll check out roof box and go with Thule..
Roofbox have sorted me out a few times in the past few years. Last time they convinced me I didn't need to buy anything from them when looking to get new bars for a new car and provided me all the part numbers to search eBay for discontinued foot pack which I did so saved me a couple of hundred quid and the faff of selling on my older bars.
I tend to stick with Thule. There are other decent options out there these days, but not necessarily cheaper than Thule and Thule are just bulletproof, tried and tested so why take the risk?
However I'd say (and have said on other similar posts on here before which has often been disagreed with) is that if you are leaving the bars and bike racks on the roof permanently then don't bother with the additional expense of the aero bars (unless you just want to for the aesthetics which is fair enough). Practically it's a waste of time due to the wind noise and additional drag of the bike racks. Just get the cheaper square bars which are far more convenient than wing bars if you ever use the racks for carrying other stuff like a trip to B&Q or something.
I’ve had Thule and Atera, roof bars and bike racks (and a Thule roofbox and an Atera towbar rack). Both brands have been good, no issues with any of the products from either. Don’t Atera make a lot of the branded stuff for ze Germans?
Get yourself on gumtree / Facebook marketplace. Should easily be able to get a set of Thule feet and bars for £50 or less. If you're lucky you'll find the specific fitting kit too.
Actually I’ve got a pair of Thule aero bars in the garage, too short for my current car so might fit a jazz? I can measure them in the morning if you want?
I’ve had a degree of success on eBay and FB when buying roofbars. Worth checking what’s on offfer out.