I finally got back to The Small Boat Shop (Norwalk CT) where I originally purchased the rack and they graciously offered to replace the H2GO pads under warantee. I would still have the alignment problem if I continued to use a H2Go or similar pad so I opted to purchase Thule Hull-A-Port carriers, which they discounted by the price of the H2Go pads. The Hull-A-Port's can attach to various brands of bars, so I was able to maximize the distance between the bars now (35 inch) and keep the carriers aligned. I'm happy.

: I checked thule.com for info, searched on "warantee" and got no
: match! I followed a bunch of site links but found nothing on the subject.

: Went to a local Thule distributor and found the H2GO model is no longer
: available, it has been redesigned and renamed "Set2Go". They
: have changed the channel for a large sloppy slot, but it doen't look any
: stronger to me. The geometry has also changed and it looks like it could
: hold a hard chine better. They were asking $57 for a set of 2 (List $64).
: I asked a floor sales guy who seemed very familiar with racks, and even
: the problem we are discussing, about Thule warantee and he said they are
: not waranteed for that problem which is considered wear and tear. He
: suggested I purchase the Set2GO pads.

: The Thule web site had spare parts available; the H2GO rubber pads were $23
: each. Mine only took 2 or 3 months to rip- is this supposed to be a
: consumable part?

: I bought the Thule rack on the advice of a salesman. He checked in a Thule
: book and assured me that the rack would fit my Saturn SC2. I found the
: curvature of the roof caused the mounting bars to be about 30 degrees out
: of alignment and the connection of the pads to the kayak hull suffered
: greatly. So I moved the bars closer together from the suggested minimum of
: 27" to 23" which reduced the alignment problem somewhat. I don't
: dare not to use bow and stern lines at all times. I also found that if I
: had bought a Yakima rack that their round cross section type mounting bars
: would have prevented this problem on my small round car.

: Apparently, with my Thule rack, duck tape is as elegant as its gonna get!