Does anyone know how to take the cross rails completely off the roof of an '07 Santa Fe? Can't see anything applicable in either the service manual or the owners manual.

Thanks in advance!

Go to this forum. It should help you. Gord
http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/WebX?14@@...%20roof%20rails

dallar - I'll let you know on Monday.

- JyRO

gllund - that link was great. I was wondering how to do the same thing.

gllund,

Appreciate the response.

Am hopeful that there's a way to take the cross rails off without completly disassembling the entire roof rack assembly.

Hey JyRO, looking forward to your post on Monday, you obviously have a lot of insider knowledge we all benefit from.

If you happen to have any insight on the weight rating of the roof rack as well, please share. A while back there was a thread on the topic, and it is clear the load bars are rated at 220lbs (at least in the US, the UK apparently might have different specs, e.g. non-load bearing bars). But I'm curious if the max. weight rating is the same if you were to put on different load bars, say from Thule, that connected to the side rails, then just moved the bars to the back or even removed them.

The reason I ask: I have one of those car top tents which weighs about 100 pounds, so I can mount it on the roof safely since it is under the dynamic load rating, but I could not sleep in it unless it had a static load rating of say 500 lbs. Many times the manufacturer will make a distinction between a static and dynamic load rating.

:liebe011:


Gord,

You are, in fact, a genius. After I sent that reply a couple of threads back about not wanting to disassemble the entire rack I once again studied the drawing you pointed me toward on the Hyundai Service website. I'm slow, so it took me a while to understand that if you remove the rear caps on the side rails you can slide the cross bars backwards right off the roof. The studying part took 30 minutes -- the actual removal about 2 minutes! Thank you for your help -- this site has been the handiest thing I've come across in quite some time! Perhaps one of these days I can assist someone else here as you have done me.

Best regards,
Larry

WOW....nobody has ever called me a genius before. LOL I'm glad it all worked out for you. That website is also very useful for Santa Fe owners. Gord

this is a great post, i was also wanting to remove them, helps a bit w fuel mileage, and for someone like myself into detailing, its a bit of a pita to keep moving them around to wash/wax ect, so just remove the rear caps is all thats required? you said 2 minutes, guessing its super easy then

This post has been edited by Santatime: Mar 10 2007, 05:42 PM

Santatime,

The hardest part is getting the caps off. You have to use something like a flat head screwdriver making sure the prying end is covered in something soft like a thin piece of cotton toweling. Then you push it in the side of the cap (not the end) and pry up on the cap as you move the instrument farther under the cap. Watch carefully while you're doing this so that you are prying on the cap only, as there is an anchoring point directly under the cap which you do not want to pry on. Takes some force to loosen the two plastic retainers which are located in the middle at the top of the cap. Be very careful not to mar the finish by shielding the painted surfaces with some type of material, i.e. cloth, tape, etc. The two retainers are plastic holders and the caps simply snap on and off these retainers. (Once you do one it will be much easier to understand.) With the caps off you simply pull up on the crossbar locks and manuever the crossbar toward the rear of the vehicle. Once the bar reaches the rear you will have to push down on a retainer located in the rear of the track to allow the bar to come completely off. It's a whole lot easier and quicker than it sounds, believe me.

And, like you, I wanted to remove them to aid with gas mileage + I'm a waxaholic.....much easier to keep the roof area cleaned and waxed.

This thread is useless without pics!

:grin:

thanks, maybe ill give it a try when it warms up, and ya pics would be nice lol :grin: wouldnt happen to have any?

dallar - I took the day off yesterday. Friday when I went out to see how it was done, the line was already shut down. Removing the rear caps is the correct way. And there is a tab on the bottom of the track that must be pushed down to allow the cross bars to finish sliding to the rear. As for the caps, here at the plant, the put the front (meaning toward the front of the vehicle) in position first and then lay the back end down. Then they whomp the back end down and it snaps into position. I'm not sure how difficult it would be to reverse this sequence, but whoever covered it before gave a good discription.



Holger - I'll have to look for the weight rating. But I'm not sure what you're asking when you bring up the Thule load bars. Do you mean, could you add more weight to the roof rack if you (possibly) spread the load over 4 bars (2 Thule and 2 OEM cross bars)? That answer, I don't know.

The roof rack rating should take into account more than just the rating of the cross bars alone. So putting more the 220 lbs. into the roof itself (through the roof rack) could damage the roof. There will be no way for me to answer that with any certainty. But I would suspect potential damage to the roof if its loaded more than 220 lbs may be a problem.

:liebe011: Thanks for the info JyRO, you're a very valuable member of this board, we're all lucky to have you here.

My suspicion is that the crossbars are the limiting factor in the 220lbs weight rating. I'm not sure of the material but they look kind of flimsy. So my hypothesis was if you took off those crossbars and used different ones that mate to the side rails, then perhaps you've now increased the load rating because you've removed the weakest link.

When you watch the manufacturing on the line, does it appear that there is adequate support underneath where the side rails are located? Perhaps they are mated directly to the support underneath? (What do they call that, the B pillar?)

This post has been edited by holger40: Mar 13 2007, 07:32 PM

JyRO,

Just wanted to thank you for taking the time and trouble to respond to my question. Folks such as yourself are the backbone of forums such as this one and make it worthwhile for those of us with issues looking for solutions.

Crossbars the limiting factor - Perhaps. Picking them up on the line, they are very light weight. As you will notice if you take them off of your vehicle. And because I do not doubt the cross bars are the weakest link, adding the Thules would likely increase the load carrying capacity (but not the rating).

Adequate support underneath - Well that's really the question. And that area is not really the B-Pillar. I could draw you a sketch if you were here. This is how it works (as best I can describe with words). The roof is single piece of steel 0.8 mm thick. The roof rails (what the cross bars attach to) are mounted in a "ditch." The ditch is the junction between the roof and side outer.

The side outer is 2 or more sheets of steel clam-shelled ... except where the side outer(s) meet the roof. At that location, its only 1 sheet of steel. The roof sheet is on top and gets spot welded in that ditch area to the side outer down the length of the vehicle. Later, paint sealer is ran into this seam to prevent water leak, etc.

The point is, the roof is not that strong. It does have roof bows under the 1 sheet of metal to keep it from oil canning, but still not very strong. The side outers are strong, but yet are taken down to a single sheet in the ditch where the roof and outer meet, as well as where the roof rack rail is mounted.

So I would be afraid of cantilevering that side outer down with enough weight. I don't know how much weight would be too much. But I would think that up to about 300 lbs equally distributed would not be a problem statically. 300 lbs driving down the road and bouncing down on the load points may be a problem. I really don't have any way of determining max load.

BTW - The A, B, C pillars are: Open all 4 doors. The front door hinge is mounted to the A-Pillar, and the A-Pillar continues up the side of the windshield to the roof. The B-Pillar is between the front and rear door. The C-Pillar is just aft of the rear door.

- JyRO

Somewhat related question - is there any reason why the front bar is restricted so far back on the rails? Most roof rack allow the front support to be at least even with the B pillar. On the 07 Santa Fe, it's restricted to about 1/2 between the B & C pillar. This makes it useless for a standard bike roof rack as it forces everything too far back.

I noticed that you can remove the plastic 'filler' thing that prevents you from moving the bars to a more reasonable forward location. Is there any reason why I couldn't do that, drill a hole in the rail to allow the clamp to work and actually be able to use the roof rack?

Here in the UK we have been told not to use the Hyundai cross bars for weight loading but the rubber strip can safely be cut to allow the existing cross bars to slide forward or attach 3rd party cross bars such as those made by Thule. I have done this in order to carry bicycles on the roof.

Regarding the earlier information on removing the cross bars, thanks guys for the advice about removing the rear caps. For those who might need to do this sometime in the future I've included a picture that might help.

You see that picture above of the rear cap removed. The best way I found to remove them is to grab it tightly at the back end of the cap (towards the rear door) and yank it upwards, saves any faffing about with screwdrivers and potential damage.

When replacing them slot the front end in and give it a whack with the palm of your hand. Easy as....!! :)

Shame about the UK roofbars, I went for Thule's in the end also...

You folks in the UK might be out of luck when it comes to load bearing cross bars, but at least you have third party options. The Thule dealers here in the US apparently don't have a "multi purpose rack system" that they are recommending. All solutions involve using adapters to mount carriers to the load bars themselves, but it sounds like in the UK you can do you own load bars. I would be grateful if you UK guys (dansaf, petejlpetejl, et al) could share some info on what Thule set up you're using, part numbers, is it a gutterless foot pack, etc., pic would be nice as well. Thanks.