Yep....Crossbars again

[kenlorz]

I know this has been beat to a pulp but I feel I must post about this. We bought our 2011 HL ltd in may and just love it. I 'm planning a big trip, driving from NE PA to FLA this winter. Obviously we need a place for luggage. I bought the sportrack aero from auto zone, but we needed crossbars. I read all the horror stories about the OEM bars in the other posts. I almost bought a universal set from malone, but changed my mind. I decided to check sears on line just for giggles and it paid off huge! I got a set of thule crossbars with the locks and all for $157.00 total. There're regularly 179.00 in the store but they were on sale plus a discount, paid for em on line and picked them up at a local k-mart sears auto center. They fit great and the price was great! I've read speculation about are these really thule....I think they are. The part number I ordered was 02872314000...the thule number on the box is 91411.
Here's a link..

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_02872314000P?prdNo=4&blockNo=4&block Type=G4

I'll post back after my trip next month on how everything performed.

[kenlorz]

Well we just got back from our trip to florida. The hl did great and so did the sportrack luggage carrier. I belive we put on almost 5k miles round trip, we averaged just about 20mpg at close to 80 mph on the highways with 6 of us in the car and the carrirer on the roof and fully loaded. We hit rain(some very heavy) most of the way on our first leg, but all our belongnings stayed perfectly dry. I can tell you we also had way,way more than 100lbs in the sportrack. I was very happy with its performance, and it made so little wind noise that most of the time i forgot it was on the roof. We hit very high winds in virginia on rt 81 on the way back, i think the carrier added to some buffeting, but still we were doing almost 80mph with no problems. As a side note i put on new tires right before we left. I purchased the dunlop signature cs for our 19" rims. They are quiet and handeld very well on the trip, we were looking for something better than the stock A20' s and these got good reviews. We got them from tirebuyer.com.....tirerack was out of stock. I was told they were on backorder for 8 weeks (this was just before thanksgiving), we called tirebuyer on a thursday nite at 7pm, the next morning about ten i got my tracking number, three days later i had my tires waiting at my home:-) . The cs' s are suppose to be decent in snow, i' ll report back and let everyone know how they do soon as we get some decent acumulaitions.