DMoore

I've been dealing with bike racks for over 40 years. Anybody here remember La Prealpina? Anyway. I've had the factory Porsche bike rack (poor); Thule; Yakima, and others.

The RockyMounts Euro Pitchfork is the best bike rack I've found. It locks securely to the Porsche factory crossbars. It's low profile, not much wind noise. The bike locks securely to the rack. With the factory crossbars and Pitchfork on my Panamera, I can shake the bike and the entire car rocks. It's a very secure attachment. It's similar to Thule, but less expensive. Try rockymounts.com.

DMoore
'13 C2S
'13 Panamera GTS

mtbscott

Plus one on the Rockymounts. See the picture on page 2 of this thread of my car with Rockymount Euro-Pitchfork trays on the OEM crossbars. They're available in a gaggle of colors too, mine are blue because I already had them, some red ones would be very cool too.

CamsPorsche

Its either Yakima or Sport Rack that makes this rack system for Porsche. The bike attachments (fork etc) slide into the rails so don't go to Suncoast unless they are selling the attachment cheap.

mtbscott

Actually a company called Votec makes the Porsche and pretty much all other Euro car brands' OEM roofbars. Not sure who makes their attachments, but you are correct that anything made to fit on "euro-style aero bars" will fit so no need to limit yourself the Porsche branded stuff.
Just to give an example of the Porsche tax, the Votec roofbars for my MINI retail at $249, the ones on my prior Audi TT-RS were only $109, the Porsche ones retail for around $600. All very similar, all made by the same vendor.

socalsteve

Yakima has a high end line...excellent products at about half the price of Porsche branded gear.

Homeles

Whats next, a trailer hitch?

barihunk

For those with the roof rack, how much additional wind noise is there at speed? Is it bothersome enough to not leave the rack on all the time?

gota911

Ye, and after that there will be an option to have a pop-up camper emerge from under the rear spoiler.

mtbscott

It's reasonably quiet with my Rockymount trays, but it's so easy to take on and off that I don't leave it on when not using it. Sunroof will pop up but not fully open with rack on either (of course that would be really noisy if it did.)

In response to 122554's inquiry about trailer hitches, I guess he's jabbing about using the 911 for a workhorse.
Of course I don't know where he resides, but I think the idea of a "garage queen/weekend" car is mostly an American thing. In the homeland, I see pictures of 911's with skis on them in the snow, cargo boxes on the roof while on holiday, etc. I use my car, not baby it. Many of the places I go to ride my bike have very cool roads going to them, why wouldn't I want to drive my cool car there?

fbroen

Roof bars by themselves are pretty dern quiet.
Roof bars with Rocky Mounts make more noise, including some whistling at certain speeds. That said, I think the bars and trays were on my car at least 6 of the 12 months last year.

Re utility point -- I prefer having the bike racks on the 911 versus our Audi -- it is so much easier loading the bikes at the very practical low roof height. SPASM gave me an extra centimeter of added practicality....

Also, I prefer fork mounts versus trays for wheel-on, with the crutch support. Lowering the bike's COG and a more secure mount reduces a lot of swaying of the bike. I got a nice padded wheel bag and put the wheels in the rear. I think I first found out wheel bags existed through one of mtbscott's posts -- so thank you.

Finally911

Thanks for the replies. I ordered the roof system from Suncoastparts and a Euro Pitchfork from rockymounts. Hope to take everything, including my bike, for a ride next weekend.

BradB

I thought about getting a roof system for bikes, but feared leaving my Porsche unattended for long periods. It seems to taunt the heathens who know you are gone for a while. Unfortunately bad things have happened now and then in my area.

Finally911

I mounted the roof carrier system and the rockymount bike carrier this weekend. The end result was an absolutely rock solid connection between bike and car. Like someone else mentioned, there is no movement in the parts and I have extremely high confidence in the system.

Here's a quick review / feedback of the process.

The Porsche system is very well layed out and after you understand how it fits the car it can be mounted/unmounted in less than 10 minutes. Fit and finish is what you would expect with very tight tolerances.

The rockymount euro pitch fork sytem is also excellent, but the instructions that came with it are absolutely terrible. Extremely vague at best and no picture of how it is supposed to look when completely assembled. I even bought the locking cylinders and they came with no instructions at all.

After re-reading the instructions 3 x and realizing it wasn't getting any more clear - I just wound up dry fitting the system, making some adjustments and figuring where everything went I secured it to the carrier.

In the end it was perfect. When the bike is in the tray and the skewer clamped down it feels like the bike is welded to the car.

After my ride yesterday I removed the roof carrier in 10 minutes - to the joyful clapping of my 9 and 11 year old. They hated the look.

socalsteve

By far, the nicest rack system out there is the Whispbar by Yakima. It's expensive, but the quality and design innovations far exceed any other bike rack carrier I have ever seen. I have the Porsche cross bars and the Whispbar bike rack, truly a greT combination for transporting my very high end road bikes.

Give them a look at www.whispbar.com

Homeles

These guys crack me up! Next thing they'll want to play DVD's while they think they're a race car driver!

By the way, to all of you I'm referring to, "RACECAR" spelled backwards is: "RACECAR"