UK Focus hatch - roof bar mounting

In message , Chris writes

On the outside. On mine they are almost touching the strips.

Take a bit of time to get them set up initially. Permanently mark the points on the car where the pads go. My bars came with some little stickers for that purpose which you can stick on under the top of the door seals out of view. Them put some mark on the bars to identify front and rear. When set up correctly one will be shorter than the other and not interchangeable without further adjustment.

When the doors shut (do it carefully first time) the mounting brackets may rub a little on the top of the doors so you may want to consider putting a little piece of tape at the chafe point.

Thanks Paul. I figured that would be the case, but thought I'd better double check as the angle of the mounting brackets seems to be better if the support pads are further in.

Thanks for the other tips as well.

Cheers,

Chris

Well I managed to get them fitted ok (the mounting brackets are very tight with the doors but got them ok in the end). One more question though - how far apart should the bars be (front to back)? At the moment the front bar is at the location of the front Ford roofbar mounting point, and the rear bar is just behind the rear Ford roofbar mounting point. The bars seem very close together, the front is ok but the rear bar seems very near the front of the car.

It seems to me that the stresses on the roof and bars would be less (when carrying a long load) if the rear bar was moved further back, but this means moving it away from the Ford mounting point, and I'm guessing they had a reason for putting it where they have. I guess it may just be that it looks odd to me because I'm used to a car with a shallower slope to the hatch (which therefore has less 'roof' behind the rear bar.

Cheers,

Chris.

In message , Chris writes

I assume that when you refer to the Ford mounting points, you mean the two blanking plugs under the door seal at each door?

I've just been out and measured where my mounting stickers are in relation to those blanks:-

My forward sticker is 9 cm to the rear of the rearmost blank of the front door.

My rear sticker is 15 cm to the rear of the rearmost blank of the rear door.

I hope that makes sense. Anyway, I've been using the bars in this position for as long as I've had the car including several trips across Europe with a roof box fitted and heavily laden without any problems. If you do intend to use a roof box, the mounting points on the box (for the bars) may determine the distance between your bars.

Yes, that's the ones

That's exactly the sort of information I was after.

Many Thanks again,

Chris