I'm currently shopping for roof racks mainly for my longboard and snowboards. Do you guys leave yours on permanently or do you take them off for better mpg . I do like the aesthetics of the roof rack with fairing but I was wondering if it greatly affects the mpg. Need help on the best looking rack out there iPhone ?
Here's my rack (Yakima Q mount, 48" crossbars w/ deflector): The Yakima fitment website will tell you that 58" crossbars are needed. That is wrong, as you'll have 5" of overhang on each side and I found it to be intrusive when entering the car. The 48" bars work perfectly in my opinion. My rack is left on year-round (just the mounts, deflector and crossbars) and I'll add bike mounts, a cargo box, etc as necessary to keep the weight and Cd down. Hope this helps.
Nice! Is the deflector Yakima also? How much did you spend total for all of these and did you notice a drop in your mpg? iPhone ?
Yes, the deflector is also Yakima. I took off the logo with isopropyl alcohol. Everything I have was bought used (read: significant discount in still-fully-functional condition). I stalked Craigslist for a while for the right price. You can easily configure a rack on Yakima's website and almost all places will sell it for that MSRP when new. Don't forget locks and keys. Yes, I did see an MPG drop, hard to quantify, though. See another thread I started about low MPG across two states.
Lots of posts on this but I'm sure it was fun typing out the title of this thread. On other cars I've owned, I notice the fairing didn't improve mpg but reduced noise.
