Afternoon All,

After our recent excursion to MM (wife & dogs) I have realised that some sort of exterior mounted bike carrier is really needed – there really wasn’t much room!

We have a new shape Honda Civic.

Honda advise against using a conventional boot mounted bike carrier 🙄 due to the boots construction 😕

No tow bar fitted.

So thinking roof top.

Do the additional of roof bars permanently change the appearance of the car i.e. does anything need to be cut to fit them?

Its not my preferred option but i see a lot of cars with them so am thinking they cannot be too unsafe. 😕

Any pointers/help/experiences?

Personally I much prefer towbar carriers, and you might find that if you can get a cheap enough towbar, and a Thule £150 rack like mine it might not be that much more expensive.

I think Thule now do towbars that aren’t towbars, just an attachment for a Thule rack, which makes sense if you aren’t towing.

I have a rack and roof bar set for sale – you just need the footpack for your particular car from Thule (Halfords sell them or loads of mail order places).

I’ve got a new shape Civic – not bought bars for this one as I’ve not felt the need just yet.

My strong preference would be for Atera bars, because they look like the cleanest solution. Like this:

http://www.civinfo.com/forum/gallery/7771-atera-roof-bars.html

Official Honda ones involve chopping the trim that’s on the roof channels (they come with capping parts to cover the chopped bit):

http://www.civinfo.com/forum/general-discussion/689-roof-rack-photos.html

I’ve liked Thule on other cars, but the feet for the Civic look a bit rubbish IMO:

http://www.civinfo.com/forum/general-discussion/4364-thule-roofrack.html

Note that no-one officially supports using roof bars on the cars with the glass roof, but there are plenty of people using them OK and most designs don’t apply any load to the glass anyway.

Cheers Simon 8)

Solid roof on my EX so hopefully one less hurdle!

Cannot see the pics as you need to be logged in 😕

Are the Atera ones clip on – As in clip into the door frame 😕

had honda bars on my type r. did have to cut the rails however – bit of a faff.

my new mugen will NOT be having roof rails 😈

Both the Atera and Thule clip into the door frame, yes – but the way the Atera mounts just looks a lot cleaner.

Worth getting registered on there, there’s quite a bit of useful info between the typical one-make-forum idiocy.