: This is what my car rack prototype piece of metal looks like that slips into
: the door slot of my car and will bolt through the nearly right angle bend
: at around a 45 degree angle into the wood side rails to pull the rack down
: and out tight to the car roof. Gorden described this last March and looks
: to be a good cleap solution to the expensive racks. The clip is only 2
: 1/2" high and won't be too intrusive looking. I plan on running two 1
: 1/8" outside dia. round conduit pipes across the car and into the oak
: side rails. On that will fit 4 Yakima Kayak Saddles I got off of E-bay.

That's essentially all Yakima does; they've just figured out the fit of the various car door closures for you. If you could borrow a Yakima rack to fit your own vehicle, you could copy their clip profile.

The Yakima clips employ an upward/inward pull to keep the clip in place and the rack down against the roof. You might want to make sure your rack system connects in a similar fashion to keep everything secure.

Wood joints also tend to loosen with time, especially when subjected to vehicular vibrations--they will go through substantially more fatigue cycles than they would in a different application. Check your connections to the oak rails periodically and/or fasten them in a manner that they won't loosen.

Keep us posted!
Shawn