Today on this 2011 Mitsubishi Endeavor, we are going to be test fitting a Thule roof rack system using a 53 inch AeroBlade bars and the Rapid Crossroad feet. We already have our roof rack assembly put together and now we are ready to mount it up on the vehicle. Since this vehicle already has factory raised side rails, we do not have to worry about any measurement for positioning our roof rack. We do need to note that Thule recommends a maximum crossbar spread of 45 inches. So we want to make sure that we do not exceed this amount. We will go ahead and place our assembly up on top of the roof rack at the front of the vehicle. When we position the front bar, we need to make sure that it is overhanging evenly from left to right.
We also need to make sure that it runs perpendicular to our factory raised side rails. To do this, we will measure from a fixed point on our side rails to the leading edge of the crossroad feet and make sure this measurement is the same on both sides. Once we have done that, we can go ahead and tighten the system down. We also want to make sure that the triangle indicator on the side of the crossroad foot points towards the center of your side rail. To tighten this system down, we are going to move back and forth from passenger to the drivers side to make sure we tighten down the system evenly and not lose our position.
With the front bar tightened down, we are ready to move on to our rear. Again we need to make sure we do not exceed our 45 inch crossbar spread. We will measure from the center of the front bar to the center of the rear bar on both sides of the vehicle and make sure that this measurement is the same on both sides and that it is less than 45 inches. This will help us to ensure that the rear bar runs parallel to the front and also that we do not exceed the crossbar spread maximum. Take note of whatever measurements you set the bars at to make sure that whatever roof rack accessory you will be using are compatible with that crossbar spread.
Again we will also check to make sure that the triangle is centered over our side rails and then we overhang evenly from left to right. With our rear bar set in position we can go ahead and tighten it down the same way we tightened down the front bar. With our rear bar tightened down our roof rack system is installed and ready to use. And that does it for our test fit of the Thule Roof Rack system with aeroblade bars on our 2011 Mitsubishi Endeavor.
