A car ski rack is a collection of bars fastened to roofs of motor cars. The bars are utilized for containing large and weighty items like skis, bicycles, kayaks, canoes, and luggage or other numerous types of containers and carriers.
The features of a car ski rack allow those who frequently use a fastened automobile to move objects placed on the roof of the vehicles adequately without affecting in any way the cargo area volume limits for the trunk design of the car. Moreover, the interior space for occupants is not reduced when using a car ski rack.
History of the car ski rack
The design and use of roof racks date way back in time.
In the late 1970s, most common passenger automobiles were equipped with rain gutters. The gutters were made raising the rim on both the left side and the right side of the metal roof panels of the car. This modification made it an easy process to attach an aftermarket roof rack or an accessory.
The 1975 Chevrolet Monza and AMC Pacer were the first cars produced massively without any rain gutters. In the 1980s and 1990s, cars having external rain gutters became a rare sight since the vehicles being introduced to the market had hidden rain gutters.
Designers of roof racks created new products to safely attach to a number of automobile roofs
Types
The roof rack system is composed mainly of towers, gear mounts, crossbars and the fitting towers responsible for giving hold to towers on a specific vehicle.
Depending on the vehicle roof, the automobile roof racks are categorized into a number of classes:
- Fixed point- numerous automobiles have pre-threaded screw holes or fittings for proprietary racks that mate with reinforced lugs placed in the roof
- Rain gutter- the gutters surrounding the roof line had older roof racks mounted directly on them.
- Factory bars- other vehicles have factory-installed roof racks that are permanent
- Bare Roof- for the various modern vehicles without gutters, roof racks are installed when hooks are attached to the top of the door frames
- Side rails- these types are specifically for vehicles with factory-installed rails so that they may be raised off the roof or flushed against the roof, running front-to-back on the roof
Many factors have to be considered when it comes to selecting and using roof racks. Some of these factors are there loading and unloading profile, the weight and strength together with any accessories that are available.
In the US, both fuel consumption increases by 1% when roof racks are used as well as air resistance. Addition of sound on the highway can be noticed due to increased wind resistance.
According to the owner’s manual, the emphasis is most of the time put in the importance of loading the bars properly when installing roof racks. Driving on the road requires the driver to load the allowed weight minus the roof rack kit’s weight. The allowed weight when using the roof racks for off-road drive must be divided by 2. That is the amount of weight allowed to carry on roof rack under such conditions of driving.
Another derivation of a roof rack is called the truck bed rack. This special type of roof rack is uniquely designed for installation over a pickup truck bed. The design of a bed rack depicts tall tubes that make the rack platform go higher than the bed surface. This feature allows space to be left for cargo inside the bed. Oversized items like surfboards can be transported owing to the long cargo platform formed by pickup truck racks. In addition, pickup truck racks are commonly utilized in recreation and construction as a base for sports, work as well as recreational gears like tents, ladders, surfboards and many others.