My dealer was pretty clueless so I thought I'd ask here.

I bought the factory crossbars, and had them installed with the roof rails. I have not been able to get them satisfactory secured to my car.

The points where the bar mounts into the roof rail are about 4 inches apart. A plastic bar goes inside the roof rail to add a mount point for the crossbar. However of the two mount points only one you can screw in, the other is just a clip. This means that no matter how much you tighten the one bolt the other one moves around 1/4 of an inch. Basically, the two crossbars are completely held in place by 4 hand tighted bolts, and four plastic clips that move around when you push/ pull on the crossbars.

After viewing the mazda installation pdf, I decided that everything was as it was supposed to be. I strapped my canoe on, left to right no movement, but the front and back of the canoe would go up and down 4-6 inches because the crossbars wouldn't stay in place. Even after using a screw driver to ratchet down on the bolts meant for hand tightening) I couldn't get the whole system to be stable.

Question is: does anyone else have the factory crossbars, if you lift up on them (especially the back lip) do they move up and down? If not, does it sound like my setup is installed correctly?

Thanks for any insight!

 

Hello, I know this is an old post but did you ever get a resolution to this issue? Just bought the crossbars for my CX-5 and am having the same issues with tightening the rear star-head screw. Instructions did not include steps on how to put the metal washers into the plastic sliding mechanisms that go into the side rails. Thanks.