Shoe-string suction cup kayak loader

Author: josh

Category: Equipment, rigging & preparation

Created on Monday, 18 October 2010 19:25

Written by Josh

When I first observed Scott Lovig's Rhino-based suction-cup kayak loading system I knew he was onto a good thing. And every time I have spoken to someone who needs a rear-loading solution without the benefit of a rack bar position rear enough of the vehicle to allow for resting the hull onto the bar without touching the car, I've told them about it. Perhaps a few would have followed through, but even more wouldn't have, most likely put off the approx price of somewhere around the $270 mark. Personally, I think it's a perfectly reasonable price, given it's quite capable of making the act of car-topping something like a Pro Angler relatively easy. And let me assure you - piecing a similar construct out of Thule components (as opposed to Rhino) isn't going to work out a hell of a lot cheaper, if at all (trust me, I looked into it). But there's more than one way to skin a cat!

Using the suction cup mounts available from RAM ($25 ea approx), I screwed two of them into an old Thule aero bar I had lying around. I then secured a Hobie rack pad over that and at that point I was ready for the 1st field test - my vehicle being the perfect example. It's a Falcon station wagon, with cradle-mounted racks hitched far forward on the roof of the car - exactly the kind of vehicle such a mounting system works for. So using the suction cups I mounted the bar to the car, then tried to jerk it off to test it's integrity. Sure enough, it held in place. Good. Placing the bow of the kayak onto it was the next test. Yep... that worked. 

Sliding it on from that position was no more effort than I might require to use a Rack & Roll to achieve the same thing, if anything slightly less. Taking the kayak back off was really just a matter of reversing what I'd done earlier, and it went smoothly to. However, whilst the Rack pad does make for a nice smooth surface to glide the kayak up onto, the potential is there for it to slip and slide off the edge. This is where having cradles mounted to the bar can really help and is probably a measure I'll take to help stop that from happening. Thule cradles aren't cheap though... so I'll be on the lookout for a shoestring solution.

Click here to read about other kayak car-topping systems