just a heads up- whilst washing the car I noticed that 3 of the 4 straps holding my Thule wingbar edge roof bars to the roof rails were degrading and failing to various degrees

 

The railing straps have small holes drilled in for some unknown reason, which obviously creates a weak point- its not vandalism as some scrote wanting to nick the bars would cut a straight line through the straps- this is consistent with a tensile failure 

 

The bars are only 2 years old, so I contacted the point of sale ( Roofbox in Sedbergh ) and they sent me out new straps FOC without the holes. It seems to be a known issue 

 

Obviously with bikes or roof boxes, canoes etc strapped to the roof box creating more stress, the straps could snap and the whole lot just flies off......

 

 

Edited 11 September, 20187 yr by carrock
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That's great customer service.

So what is the actual complaint?

Good to know.  Thanks for posting. Mine are only a couple of months old, but will be keeping an eye on them now.  Cheers. 

Attaching roof bars with rubber straps seems a bad idea to me regardless of the quality of the straps.

I take it that there is a steel insert, which takes the load, inside the plastic. The holes in the plastic are almost certainly to let water drain out and prevent corrosion of the steel. I think that the plastic cover is largely cosmetic apart from preventing damage to the roof rails from the steel straps. If the straps are tightened correctly it is unlikely that the plastic under the steel on the roof rail can move even if degraded in the same way as shown.

agreed there is a steel insert inside the rubber but the rubber is there to prevent water ingress and corrosion to the steel which is the loadbearing part

On ‎11‎/‎09‎/‎2018 at 19:25, gregoir said:

That's great customer service.

So what is the actual complaint?

basically the protective rubber layer shouldn't be rotting away like that, leaving the steel inner open to corrosion