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Installing Yakima Landing Pads and Control Towers


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I installed a set of Yakima landing pads (landing pad 7) and control towers with 58" crossbars on my Cmax friday and yesterday (about 6 hours total, probably much less if I had to do it again).  A bunch of fully captioned/descriptioned pictures are in an album in my media area, but I'll use the first post of this thread to do a full writeup of it.  Most of the details are already in the captions, and I'll copy and expand on them here.

 

[EDIT 3/1/14: The water tightness got tested in the latest rain storms that we finally got in SoCal this week.  No sign of leakage at all]

 

A few relevant details:

Front Bar location: centered 11" back from the rear edge of the windshield glass

Rear Bar location: centered 34" back from the center of the front bar (45" back from the windshield)

Pad distance in from gutters (measured from center of the inner gap between the rubber and metal to the edge of the pad): about 0.5" (needs to be checked again, and probably should be a little further in to avoid internal roof structure pieces if you don't want to drop the headliner).  The distance from the gutter edge to the hole centers is about 1.5"

 

Most of it wasn't too difficult, but I took it pretty slow because it's a lot of disassembly (headliner) and some irreversible metal mods (drilling holes) in a brand new car. 

 

Here are the pictures, in order (I should have done step by step of the headliner teardown/reassembly, too, but didn't...)

For removing the headliner, I started at the back and just yanked on the trim pieces (trying to pull near fasteners as I could feel them).  I didn't fully remove any of the trim pieces-- most were left hanging by a lower clip.  The overhead mounted stuff (handles, visors) all come out with Torx T15 screws, but be careful with the springy handles-- they can be tricky to manage on reassembly.  All the screws were the same size, though I kept them with their trim pieces just in case. Reassembly went front to back, and is basically massaging pieces into place, making sure clips align with holes, then pressing.

 

 

The tools:

pencil
masking tape
measuring tape
small flat bladed screwdriver
T15 torx driver
touch up paint
hammer
center punch (to set drill hole locations)
electric drill
1/8" drill bit
1/4" drill bit
25/64" drill bit
deburring tool
drill stops (made from PVC pipe)
flexible video inspection scope (useful, not required)

Tools (hammer not shown)

 
Headliner down from behind:

inside liner back 4

 
Headliner down from the front, along the edge:

Headlinder dropped, along edge

 
Pics of things that can interfere with the install:

another ledge

inside ledge

inside ceiling ledge

beam

 
Holes marked and punched:

Locations marked and punched

 
Holes drilled and the deburring tool.  Use a hard drill stop like the PVC pipe I used.  With larger drill bits, they can screw in and push a wrap of tape before you know it's happened (happened once, but with the headliner down it didn't cause any trouble).  I gave them 0.25-0.5" to drill with.  The sheet metal is thin, so 1/4" is plenty.

holes deburred

 
Holes touched up with paint:

painted holes

 

Blind nuts (one installed, one on roof):

Blind nuts

 
Blind nuts-- I had to install in this orientation and then turn, and in some cases reach underneath to turn the nut in the carrier to avoid the internal rail.  Two of them butted against the rail and deformed the carrier before I realized that's what was happening, so I had to insert the nuts from underneath by hand for those two (dropping them and looking for where they slid in the rails was very time consuming-- details in the picture descriptions).

Blind nuts 2

 
The next steps I didn't photograph because it's kind of messy with the silicone RTV, but it's exactly as described in the Yakima instructions: put a bead of silicone RTV (included with the landing pads) across the top of the nut gasket, then install the landing pad (thin base and plastic upper) over it and tighten.  For the ones I had to insert from underneath by hand, it was easiest to partly drop the bolt in and then reach underneath to feel the bolt location with the nut.
 
Here are close ups of the loose nuts.  If you have to install them loose, the asymmetric side that's flat around the threaded hole faces the sheet metal:

Loose nut top

 
This is the back of the nut- it's symmetric and rounded around the threaded hole.  This side faces away from the sheet metal:

loose nut bottom

 

Front crossbar installed, with tape marking the center location so I can locate the rear bar:

front crossbar

 
Almost finished-- all installed but I still have to reinstall the headliner.

Almost finished

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by chrisl
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awesome.   give us a report a few months down the road.  I'd like to know how well it holds out with load, highway usage, etc...

 

I think it will be fine with load-- I can shake the car up and down by the rack without any visible wiggling of the roof.  A little further inboard and it would be visible. That's how I picked the distance from the gutters- the roof is very stiff close to them, though the proximity to the internal rails made installation a bit of a pain.  With the 58" bars, the risk is that I can put a lot more stuff on top... 2-3 bikes plus a space case.

 

The wind noise is quite audible at 70+mph -- I have three bike mounts on it now and there's a lot of wind noise on the highway, even without bikes on it.  I'll probably add a fairing to it to see if it helps with the noise.  I've had a similar setup, but with Q-towers and clips for the past 20 years or so, but the cars it was on were so noisy (plymouth sundance and a saturn wagon) that the wind noise wasn't really noticable.

 

As far as gas mileage-- my commute is a mix of surface streets and stop-and-go, with about 8 miles of carpool lane in the middle, so it didn't look like it affected the mileage much today.  The rack can be removed, leaving little pods (that have smooth covers) for comparison, but I'll probably keep it on most of the time.  It has little effect in city traffic, and when I go on long trips I tend to have a lot of bikes.

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A Trans Am would be a totally different story... For me, the car is primarily a way to keep the rack off the ground and haul it around. The Cmax does it comfortably and efficiently, but it's still mostly about getting bikes around. I tried to wait for Yakima to come out with clips, but got impatient. And it would have been $$$ to replace all my stuff with thule compatible mounts. And since it will never really come off anyway, I think it looks better with the permanent towers.

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A Trans Am would be a totally different story... For me, the car is primarily a way to keep the rack off the ground and haul it around. The Cmax does it comfortably and efficiently, but it's still mostly about getting bikes around. I tried to wait for Yakima to come out with clips, but got impatient. And it would have been $$$ to replace all my stuff with thule compatible mounts. And since it will never really come off anyway, I think it looks better with the permanent towers.

Let me expand my comment, I drilled holes in the roof of my Trans Am for a 102" Stainless Steel whip antenna mounted on a coil spring.  I placed it in the exact middle of the roof to use the length of the car serve as my ground plane.

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Let me expand my comment, I drilled holes in the roof of my Trans Am for a 102" Stainless Steel whip antenna mounted on a coil spring.  I placed it in the exact middle of the roof to use the length of the car serve as my ground plane.

 

had to be kind of odd looking on the Trans Am!

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Yes it was but I succeeded in what I set out to do, getting the best possible range I could from the low power range of a mobile CB radio.  I used to sit on top of the highest peak in my area while my buddy would do the same up in the Sierra Mountains at a distance of more than 200 miles away and we could talk back and forth like we were together in the same car.  Plus if the atmospheric conditions were just right, I could skip off the atmosphere and talk with people half way around the world.  Was like having the power of a base station in a mobile transmitter.  Crazy I know but this was all during the time when CB's were being made popular by the Smoky and the Bandit movies and also why I bought my Trans Am. The power of advertising.  :rockon: 

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  • 5 weeks later...

I installed the Thule Aerobars and no holes were required.  I've had two bikes on the rack at over 65mph with no problems.  There is also a kayak rack that fits the aerobar system.  Anyone not wanting to drill holes in their C-Max roof should check out the Thule system.  The rack also removes easily when you're not going to carry anything.

post-1110-0-32431100-1392501077_thumb.jpg

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Tdefny

 

I don't know about use with the Panoramic Roof but as you can see from the photo the supports are on the side. I'm sure they are well clear of the opening but check the Thule website or call them to get their take. If you can use this rack it goes without saying to be careful putting things on it.

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I installed the Thule Aerobars and no holes were required.  I've had two bikes on the rack at over 65mph with no problems.  There is also a kayak rack that fits the aerobar system.  Anyone not wanting to drill holes in their C-Max roof should check out the Thule system.  The rack also removes easily when you're not going to carry anything.

 

The Thule racks are nice, and I would definitely have done that if I was starting from scratch, but I already had a bunch of yakima fork mounts that are round bar only and would have been $$$ to replace if I switched to a Thule system.  I would have preferred to get a yakima clamp on system, but they've been stubbornly not making clips available for the C-max.  Drilling the roof didn't bother me much-- I keep cars until they're completely used up, and on my last car (a saturn wagon), I actually removed the factory rack to install yakima a yakima clip on rack because it had a higher weight rating and wider bars.  It left a bunch of threaded rivets in the roof that I just filled with screws sealed with RTV and I never had a problem with water in ~13 years.

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Tdefny

 

I don't know about use with the Panoramic Roof but as you can see from the photo the supports are on the side. I'm sure they are well clear of the opening but check the Thule website or call them to get their take. If you can use this rack it goes without saying to be careful putting things on it.

I have over 7000 miles with these. Including all kinds of weather, all kinds of gear, highway speeds up to 90mph, elevations ranging from below sea level to over 10,000 feet and temperatures from -5°f to 80°f...

 

The only complaint so far is the hit in fuel economy the box causes... ;)

 

pt34.jpg 1vtp.jpg

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