Wilson has had no problems so far with his new setup, but on our drive back from the Gorge Champs last Sunday we started to lose our rack again. As we approached Marysville I thought I noticed the bows of our boats start to bob up and down more than previously. I pulled over on the shoulder and got out to look at the rack. All of the roof mounts seemed to be in place and secure. I tugged hard on the rack in various places and could discover no play (mistake here on my part). We resumed driving on I5 – now Denise agreed that the boat noses are bouncing more and we were driving slower. Before we decide to pull over again, (only a couple of minutes after our first stop) the left front roof mount drops completely off of our Prius. Quick pullover. As far as I can tell the lost mount caused no wrecks, but the traffic is way too heavy to retrieve it safely. With the 2 Goodboy racks the overall setup was still quite rigid. I jam an OC seat under the side where the mount is now missing, add a bunch of straps to hold everything in place and we drive 1 – 2 miles on the shoulder to the next exit in Marysville. Fortunately Wilson is about 20 minutes behind us driving Kevin’s trailer which has space for more boats. So we take our boats off of our rack, put them on some grass, then completely remove and disassemble what remains of our rack. (To get the Gboys off of our cross bars I borrowed a crescent wrench from someone else parked in the AutoZone parking lot where we have stopped).

The Prius does not have rain gutters. The roof mounts sit on pads and have hooks that go into the tops of the door openings. I checked the roof mount connections to our car before our trip and slightly tightened a couple of them. But there are also connectors between those mounts and the crossbars. I believe my main mistake was in thinking I could detect any looseness in those mount to crossbar connections by simply tugging very hard on the crossbars. Wrong. (The rigidity that the 2 Goodboys adds may contribute to making that kind of movement hard to find) Apparently the left front mount to crossbar bolt had been working its way loose and I did not catch that because I did not try tightening it with an Allen wrench. (We had the right Allen wrench on the trip and I could have checked/tightened those connections at anytime.) So this rack failure was clearly my fault. The possibility of endangering other folks on the road is a complete nightmare. One thing that we have been doing that seems like a good idea is to have a safety strap around everything (snug but not too tight) that goes inside our car (we close the back doors on it). That strap is our last line of defense and may make the difference in our being able to pull over before complete rack failure and separation occurs.

Coincidentally Van Douglas had a rack problem during Gorge Champs week and got the nose of his Huki sheered off in the process of it coming completely off of his car. I don’t know the details of that rack problem. But a number of Gorge paddlers have reported rack issues in the last year or two. Here are links to some of those discussions.

August 17 2022 Roof Rack Failure (facebook)

September 11, 2022 Roof Rack Failure (facebook)