: 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

Hi Shawn,

Yakima doesn't have a fit for my car, Thurl did but I wasn't going to pay as much for a rack as I have in my boat.

I really like Bill's idea of black pipe covered with the plastic tubing. I may have to go with the conduit for now as time is a factor for me. The piping would be set snug tight in a 1" deep hole that doesn't go all the way through the oak side rails and then a bolt threaded all the way through from the top of the rail through oak, pipe, oak. Then for modifications it would be easy to take the pipes out. For extra strength for the thin conduit I was thinking of filling it with tuff fill foam.

John