does anyone have an inflatable/temporary roof rack? there must be something absolutely keech about them... if not, why are people still buying ordinary, super-expensive ones?

[AitchTwoOh]

hello all! i am bored and supposed to be working and so am fantasising about campy stuff, bien sur.
what do we think about www.amazon.co.uk/Northcore-Double-Soft-Roof-Rack/dp/B0014DBUHY/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top? (apart from the fact that it says it's just for surf boards...

whoops. did i not tick 'make this a link without any hassle?'

i'll just do it the old-fashioned way

The first review looks promising, looks like it would work for your soft light weight stuff, bedding and liners and ikea pillows and the like, although you'd have to get some good waterproof holdalls to put them in.

Remind me why are you anti standard bars and roof box? Was it a space/storage thing or along the lines of your gas & explosions issues?

What is this word keech?

keech is shite, obv. pron. NOT as in stacy keach, although his name did make my countryfolk laff.

main objection to roof bars and box is expense and storage, i think. am not a big camper, definitely fair weather and only for one or two days stay (it's how things work out with job etc) so this would just be to give us a bit of extra space. in fact, what i would probably do is fill our hard shell suitcase with our bedding stuff and some cooking gear and leave it there in perpetuity. does that not sound like a good idea?

Where are you going camping? Scotland or foreign parts?

oh, only ever scotland. pref no more than an hour and a bit away tbh. not worth going much further for a couple of days.

That does sound like a good idea. I love having things stored at the ready. Is the hard shelled suitcase water proof?

i would have thought so... at least insofar as the zips are pretty covered up. regarding the rain, it seems that these strap-on roof racks pretty much wick rain into the car when it's bucketing, which i suppose could be a problem, but otoh if it's raining, i'm not going, so maybe not. and at that price...

re why are folk buying super expensive ones?

Not sure. A proper roof box is watertight (ours stays out in the side passage all year and when we open it come spring it is still dry as a bone inside). So that is useful if you want to store things in it while you camp.

Men people have concerns about aerodynamicity and altered "handling" with shoving things up on the roof so I guess a plastic roof box with nose cone reduces this (saying that i did notice one car last weekend where the utter dumbos had put it on back to front).

You can cram a load of crap in them, annoying fiddly crap like camping chairs and the sod of a packing cobb.

You could construct a tarp affair over the top and anchor down with elastics
[v 1970s retro packing]

lol, i love elastics... actually i think we have a samsonite case upstairs that has a semi-hard shell (ooer) which if memory serves is actually shaped to have a bit of a nose-cone. (all the better to negotiate the ryanair carousel...)

are you supposed to put heavy or light things in them, what's teh thinking there re drag co-efficients?

The folk on ukcampsites often rave about the handirack roof rack - I think there might even be a discount code on their site somewhere...

www.handiworld.com/

yes, dobby, in fact that was the one i was going to get, but does this not look like a similar thing except cheaper? i suppose it doesn't inflate (do i need it to inflate?)

I believe that light things should go on the roof to prevent wobbly tipping over scenarios [technical term], so with us it's all the bedding and clothes and all the heavy stuff should go in the boot.

I have to say this is NOTHING compared to being a caravan owner where weight and axle (axel?) distribution is all important. I know this as I have watched the caravan channel on free sat.

dh tells me that axel is Axel Rose from Guns and Roses, who also needs careful placement in the caravan or roof box should you be packing him.

We just leave our roof bars on the car all year round, so no storage problem.

I can't see how inflatable ones would be strong enough.

tell me more, tilly, you can't just come on here and poo all over my blow up bars without further detail.

we were driving across the pennines last year, slub, and saw an utterly horrific accident (i say horrific, afaik no one was hurt). a caravan had been caught the wrong way by a gust of wind and literally lifted the 4x4 it was attached to and corkscrewed it into the side of the hill. un-be-lieveable.

Well what if you got a puncture in one? Wouldn't the whole thing collapse? And roof boxed, even with sleeping bags / clothes in can be very heavy.

What's the problem with the normal ones? We just got halfords ones that have lasted forever, always on the car!

the expense is the problem, apart from that i'd be fine with roof bars. apparently they don't burst, but if they did that would be a big problem, yes. mind you, the first ones i linked to aren't inflatable.

oh, and there is no way we'd be getting a roof box, we haven't the space to store it.