[mosswings]

I've been trying to get my Thule clamp-on roof rack to work on my 07 Camry without interfering with the doors. Even though there's little depressions in the door frame where the clamp tongues are supposed to go, they don't give enough clearance at the door edge and tend to push the doors down, misaligning the door catch and making the doors hard to open. After I took the racks off, there was still some residual difficulty in opening the doors that hadn't been there before.

I've experienced this on other cars, but have been able to make clamp-ons work by fiddling with the position of the tongue. However, the 07 Camry's door-frame clearances are very tight - on the order of the thickness of the tongues - and there's no room for fiddling. I've also toyed with Yakima clamp-ons with the same effect - no clearance. So, even though Thule claims to have a proper fit kit, I'm not so sure. Toyota, of course, makes no recommendations nor warnings about potential problems with clamp-on racks. Some dealers in the area have advised me to not use clamp-on racks, asserting that the racks will misalign the doors.

Has any 07 Camry owner had a better experience with clamp-on racks than I have?

Thanks.

 

[fcatwo]

Both Yakima and Thule sell tracks that are permanently installed on the roof to accept feet and crossbars and look much like the OEM rack bases on many SUVs. The tracks require drilling holes in the roof and are not removable -- although the feet and crossbars used with them are. Most rack retailers install them for about $200.00 not including the feet and crossbars. DIY requires care as the holes must be drilled in roof areas with room underneath for the expanding bolts to fit. Both Yakima and Thule used to send diagrams with the tracks showing where the holes go on particular vehicles but I don't know whether they still do that. I last used them on a car roof in 2002 and I've noticed recently that although they still sell them they no longer list them in the primary options list for most vehicles. A rack installer in Seattle told me recently that they can install them on both the Camry and Prius. Hopefully someone here has more recent experience with the tracks on cars than I do although I did put them on my current fiberglass truck cap.