I bought the Thule rapid aero bars (aluminum) since they looked sleeker and stronger than the plain old steel square bars. Then, when purchasing the the Echelon (518) bike rack I learned an adapter is necessary for to mount to aero bars. Ok fine, but one look at this adapter and I have to wonder if my two year old designed it. I'm no roof rack engineer but it's really not a stretch of the imagination to conjure up a bracket design that involves a plate over the underside of the aero bar and bolts to the t-slot. But instead they came up with a crude steel plate which locks onto the bike rack slot and the aero bar slot. Then there's a clumsy cam lever which secures the plate to the aero bar. It seems that Thule has redesigned the adapter since I purchased mine, using the aforementioned obvious design. In hindsight I would have ditched the entire system in favor of a Yakima except that the factory mount points for my car only work with Thule, frown face.
Total Shit Design:
Somewhat better than Total Shit Design
No comments:
Post a Comment