You wrote:

: I've been trying to find a way to car top my yak on a 2 door Sentra. I'm
: kinda partial to the car, and don't want to tear it up too bad. I keep
: trying to beat down the Okie in me and put away the duct tape and safety
: wire.

: I can put one rack over the doors, but what to do about #2. Placing both on
: the door yields a rack that is only 18-20" apart and shifts the boat
: forward a lot. So how do I mount some rain gutters on the roof that will
: have sufficient strength to support 1, maybe 2 kayaks on the freeway?
: Could I use something like liquid steel and glue them on (assuming I
: stripped the paint off where they would go)? I would think that the roof
: of the car is stronger than a camper shell, but I am loathe to drill a
: hole and cut the headliner to place a bolt through the roof. Assuming bow
: and stern are secured so the boats won't shift laterally, how much support
: in the middle is necessary?

: Many thanks to the collective voice. Many minds are better than one.

: Larry

If you put a receiver hitch on the car, you can get a rear crossbar support form Thule, Yakima etc which pluggs into the receiver and provides you a crossbar at the very end of your vehicle. This certainly would improve the cross bar spread from what you are currently looking at.

As far as the durability of the sheat metal verses a camper shell, an aluminum camper shell is designed for a rack attached to the square supports. I doubt the sheet metal of the car can take the upward force from the racks without drilling into the supports underneath. My wife has a Cavalier 4 door which I occasionally put a Thule rack on to transport kayaks. The roof is starting to look like hail damage from the rack bending the roof of the car around.

My normal kayak vehicle is an F-150 with a fiberglass shell using Thule's artifical rain gutters. I have many many thousands of miles carrying boats in all kinds of weather and have never had any kind of difficulties.