Don't take covered Yakima landing pads through a car wash

[Glenn MacGrady]

This is a Yakima Skyline "landing pad", four of which you screw into the roof of vehicles that have factory-drilled screw holes for roof racks. The towers with crossbars can quickly attach and detach from the landing pads. You can see the screw in the middle of this landing pad going into the factory screw hole:



When the towers+bars are detached, you can put a landing pad cover on each landing pad. Here is one of the covers:



The covers snap onto the landing pad with friction, which supposedly makes the landing pads look sleeker and more aesthetic, like this:



Having taken my Skyline towers+crossbars out of the landing pads for the first time, I wanted to clean the car before I went to the beach two days ago, then to REI to buy a Base Camp 6 tent, and then to the best pizza joint in Connecticut, Modern Apizza in New Haven. So, I also was putting on my landing pad covers for the first time.

But . . . wait . . . I was taking the car through the local car wash, and I actually wondered whether the covers could be knocked off in the car wash. Nah, I figured, the MIT engineers that work for Yakima would have computer-designed the covers to survive to-be-expected car washes.

Here is one covered landing pad as it emerged from the car wash:



Oops . . . MIT ain't what it used to be. The cover came off and disappeared into the car wash underground mechanism.

Actually, I blame myself for taking this easily avoidable risk. I had visions of having to buy a whole new set of landing pads, or at least a set of four covers, to get one lousy plastic cover. But, hooray, etrailer.com sells single Yakima landing pad covers for $10, but with shipping and tax it still stung at $17.

Morale of the story: Remove your landing pad covers before going through a mechanized car wash.

 

[Boatman53]

A lesson for sure but to be honest my brain went to something far more catastrophic.
Jim

 

[gadabyte]

the best pizza joint in Connecticut, Modern Apizza in New Haven.

preach!

 

[DougK]

interestingly I had a spectacular failure of a Yakima rack recently, upon posting a one-star review on the Yakima website, support told me not to take the racks through a car wash at all..
danged if you do (take the rack through the carwash), danged if you don't (remove the rack before going through).

the review was,
Last week I was driving on the freeway with a canoe when the rack actually literally fell off the car. The canoe came down on the roof. Fortunately I had tied it off on bow and stern as always, or it would have flown off into a busy freeway at 70mph. Parts of the rack were missing after this, the feet on two of the supports had gone. The rack looked normal when I tied the canoe on earlier that day.
With nearly fifty years of carrying canoes on roof racks I have never seen a spectacular failure like this before. Somehow it must have worked loose in some one or more of the sixteen adjusting screws and then disintegrated.
One star for working for a year or so.

Yakima did send me a couple of the feet/pads to replace the missing ones, so one star for support too ;-)

When I replaced the racks on the car, the problem became apparent. All four of the pitch bolts, which also fasten the pillars to the bars, had loosened dramatically. These bolts aren't visible or accessible when the rack is on the car. I'd tightened to torque specs on first installation.
Once these are loose, the pillars move around, and I guess they just walked off the side of the car.

Going to take the racks off every few months now, to open up the covers and check on those bolts..
Car is a Ford Maverick hybrid, rack is the Ford-spec part.

 

[scoutergriz]

After losing the factory HD rack from my '95 ford wagon (along with 3-4x10x1/2 sheets of very expensive plywood) I got in the habit of using red Loctite on ALL the bolts, followed with a glob of silicone over them. My Thule caps all disappeared over their first winter- my mounts have the hardened steel pins through them so I drilled 1/8" holes from side to side and cable tied the free replacements on with cheap dollar store ties- that was 3 winters ago, and they're still holding tight and don't leak thanks to the silicone not leaving a hole for water to sit in. the cheap ties break easily with any stress from a knife, pliers, screwdriver, or even steel key and you get about 50 for a couple of bucks.

 

[clemency]

Wash the car? What?

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

ANGRY UPDATE:

Don't take your vehicle with Yakima landing pad covers on the highway either. On an interstate trip last week (55-65 mph), I stopped at a rest area and discovered that one of the covers had blown off and another was half detached. They simply don't have sufficient inherent grip strength when they snap on the landing pads via friction.

I'm going to try to contact Yakima . . . and wail, gnash teeth and rend garments at them!

 

[Black_Fly]

Good opportunity to tighten that bolt! When I removed my rack from the Explorer I was selling, one bolt was way loose. I’m tightening the pads on the new rig and thinking about some blue Locktight.

 

[scoutergriz]

ANGRY UPDATE:

Don't take your vehicle with Yakima landing pad covers on the highway either. On an interstate trip last week (55-65 mph), I stopped at a rest area and discovered that one of the covers had blown off and another was half detached. They simply don't have sufficient inherent grip strength when they snap on the landing pads via friction.

I'm going to try to contact Yakima . . . and wail, gnash teeth and rend garments at them!

don't feel bad, I looked out at my "foolproof" cable tie attachments this morning- guess who the fool is??? yup, one of the ties broke and the cap is somewhere in northern Ontario...

 

[Black_Fly]

A dab of silicone sealer will keep those on.

 

[UCanoe_2]

I had the same Yakima landing pads with the same covers on my Tacoma for 18 years and over 200,000 miles. The landing pads were mounted on tracks on the camper top, installed by the truck cap dealer. Everything stayed attached with no problems.

My daily commute, depending on where I worked, was between 18 and 24 miles one way, 5 days per week. A couple miles of the trip were at 35 mph, but the rest was 55 mph highway. The truck went all over VA, WV, MD, and DE, plus one trip to the Adirondacks hauling a canoe.

"Wash the car" is a somewhat foreign concept, but I did go through the touchless automatic car wash several times per year. I never made the mistake of entering the car wash with the 78 inch round bars attached.

When I retired the truck I kept the towers and eventually gave them to a guy in our canoe club. I tried to remove the landing pads, but they would not budge without destroying the topper. I kept the 78 inch bars to use with my new vehicle, so I can carry 2 canoes.

 

[Glenn MacGrady]

A dab of silicone sealer will keep those on.

If I do that, can I take the covers on and off. I'd like to increase the covers' clamping force on the Landing Pads but don't want to glue the covers onto the Landing Pads.

I had the same Yakima landing pads with the same covers on my Tacoma for 18 years and over 200,000 miles. The landing pads were mounted on tracks on the camper top

Are you sure you had similar components to the Landing Pads and snap-on covers that I picture in my OP? As far as I and AI know, only the Yakima Skyline System uses Landing Pads--for vehicles with factory threaded fixed mounting points in the roof--and the Skyline System was not introduced until 2016.