I’ve just bought a couple of Thule Freeride 530 roof mounted cycle carriers to replace my wobbly old Halfords jobbies.

Did a trial fit up last night and although I’m happy with the way the carrier holds the bike, there’s a bit of an issue with the way the carrier mounts to my roof rack.

Because the two bars on my roof rack are very close together (less than 2’ apart) and the front mount of the carrier is fixed, the whole thing sits too far back on the car with the centre of gravity slightly behind the rear roof rack bar.

I’ve noticed the front mount of the carrier is clamped tight with a couple of rivets and was hoping I could just chop these off, re-position the mount and re-clamp with nuts and bolts.

Has anyone had similar issues and is this ^^^ likely to work?

Thanks in advance.

you can get special attachments to add more bars to small car roof racks. What car have you got?

Thanks andyl, its a mk2 Toyota MR2 Turbo.

I’m more worried about weight distribution (glass roof) than support for the actual carrier. I need to get the whole thing to sit centraly on the bars like my old Halfords ones did.

they may let you move the rack forwards.

This kind of thing:

Think they let you increase the gap between the bars.

That looks good but i can’t see it working with my rack which is a Toyota one just for the MR2;

Thanks anyway

ahh, oem rack. better get your drill out then!

I should probably have mentioned that before!

DIY job it is.

The racks in the pic look like my cheapo halfords set, which are exactly the same as my freeride 530’s is there much difference between the two?

Same basic design but the Thule seems much more solid.

With the Halfords one, the tyres sit on a single beam (which allows the front wheel to wobble about) whereas with the Thule, there’s 2 rails that the tyre sits in between.

My Halford one also seemed to have a lot of play in the downtube support so the whole bike would lean from side to side.

I’ve had it a long time and nothing’s ever actually fallen off but it’s not great for confidence looking up and seeing so much movement!