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Has anyone put a cage (basket) style roof rack on top of a Cayenne with the OEM cross bars before? Can’t find any pictures or found anyone that would do something this tacky. I know it doesn’t look as stylin’ as the Thule or Yakima boxes, but their plastic builds don’t seem very tough, and I want to have the height clearance when I’m not carrying anything. And I have no problem taking the CTT offroad anyway!
What is hard to figure out is what fits; the stock cross bars have fixed points in the tracks to clamp them, so they can only be set apart by:
27.75”
31”
35.25”
38.5”
42.5”
45.75”
The Yakima Loadwarrior needs 30” between the bars, so 31” is close, but with the OEM 4” wide aero style cross bars, most U-bolts or clamps on racks are barely big enough to go around that to start with so that inch might make a big difference.
Has anyone put a Loadwarrior on the Cayenne OEM crossbars? Or does anyone know how far apart the mounts are on a Loadwarrior with the extension in? Or can anyone recommend a roof basket that they know fits?
Take a look at post #24 in this thread of mine https://rennlist.com/forums/porsche-cayenne-forum/959688-misha-widebody-cayenne-957-turbo-s-project.html
where I've changed how my Yakima Skybox will mount to the crossbars. Maybe doing something similar will give you some other dimension compatibility or more mounting flexibility.
The Cayenne crossbars are very thick and I also wasn't totally comfortable with the way the clamps fit around them, to the point where I reversed one set to make sure it was impossible for the box to come off in either direction under hard acceleration or heavy braking (front ones went around from the front and rear ones from the rear), which meant the box was less easy to put on and take off since it couldn't shift in one direction to remove both sets of clamps from the bars.
Here are the pics - description is in the other thread.
Thanks Petza – I actually read your thread already, great info on mounting the Skybox and if I eventually go that route I will reverse the mounts for sure. I am concerned how the box will hold up over time still though, and want to keep looking for basket options. The Yakima Loadwarrior seems to have pretty wide clamps, kind of like the Skybox does, but I’ve really seen no one try and mount one on a CTT. If I am the first, I’ll post pics. Nice garage btw!
Just to finish this story, I wound up following your lead and glad I did. A Yakima box came up for 250$ and I couldn’t say no at that price. I wanted to use the stock rails; they are really solid and quiet at speed, and I think the Yakima mounting system works best on them. Very large clamps that slide easily into a wide range of positions, so fitting them to the bars was no problem at all. Did the reverse mount on one set of clamps too, makes the attachment rock solid. The tape protects the bars well.
I also think this was better than going for the rack and bags route...I would have liked to put a spare up there, but this was really convenient. My Yakima model took up the whole width of the roof, and opening on both sides was a bonus. Camping gear was in the back of the truck, and suitcases up top for when we stayed at motels. I think the box is more waterproof than the bags would be - we drove for hours through the tail end of hurricane Harvey, seriously strong winds and a downpour like I have never seen, just sheets of water coming down like a wave. Bags were bone dry. Just worked great. Would highly recommend this setup for traveling.
07-14-2017, 02:47 AM
Roof basket on a 2004 Cayenne
