Thule 561 for me.

No complaints, no worries with clamping the downtube etc - you just have to stash the front wheel separately.

WD :-)

After you destroy your bike pulling into the garage, you will wish you had done a hitch rack!

Seriously though, roof racks are kind of a pain, especially for short people/significant other. You get really crappy gas mileage. You have to clean off a layer of bug guts. Stone chips and other miscellaneous damage from flying objects. I also have seen bikes get ripped off a roof rack in super windy conditions, which is most days in places like Wyoming.

We take a friend's creeper Van to races and the bikes on the hitch rack don't even get wet when it rains because they sit in the low pressure area befind the van. Let your bike draft behind the car.

Now I just want to see pictures of said creeper van

Get a hitch rack. 1up.

/end thread

I would get a trailer hitch and a hitch rack. I have trashed a mountain bike AND a road bike on a roof rack. And wrecked my car's roof. Yes, I did it twice. It takes just *one* time to forget your bike is up there. Hitch racks are also much less of a pain to deal with IMHO (if you get a good one).

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"The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

The Grumpster speaks truth! The great John Howard used to start his paid seminars by saying "I'm going to give some of you your money back. Do you have a roof rack? Take it off. There, I just handed you the value of your bike and maybe your car." It's not a matter of "if", it's a matter of "when" and "how bad". In decades of marriage, I've only seen my wife cry a handful of times and one of them was when she paused in the drive way to speak to me and then continued on into the garage. When she heard that hideous noise and realized what had happened, she just sat there and sobbed. (surprisingly, the garage door was ruined, the Thule rack was ruined, the sunroof on the Audi was ruined but the Kestral 200 was just fine - must have flexed)
It's just too easy to make a mistake. A friend used to put his mtn. bike on the roofrack in the carport and take it to work for a noon ride every day. One day he decided to take his custom built, slightly taller Landshark instead. The crumpled remains are now in his living room under a sheet of tempered glass as a coffee table.

I keep an orange traffic cone in the garage along side the roof mounted bike racks. Every time a bike/kayak/rocket-box goes on the roof of either car, the orange cone goes in the stall where that car would normally park. Instant reminder if you should open the door with the intent to pull in when you've forgotten that there's something on the roof.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Anyone with a roof rack have any suggestions? Hitch is not possible.

Use the built-in roof rack system that comes with your car is always the best, maybe using some Thule parts if required. If I had to go aftermarket, I'd look at SeaSucker. And, just to pile on, a bike on top of the car is super lame. Bikes go inside the car. Or, if you have to, a hitch rack.

Yakima ForkLift is what I had when I had my crosstrek. I did a few road trips (Seattle -> Whistler) no problem. The crosstrek is a bit taller than sedans, so if you're shorter than about 6' tall, it might be a pain.

After you destroy your bike getting rear ended by an asshole with no insurance, you'll wish you had done a roof rack!

But yeah, there are compromises to both. If I were getting a roof rack, I'd get one that grabs the wheel by the fork, seems like they reduce the leverage on the rack. (factoring in disc brakes, mtbs, etc).