You’ll quickly find that the podium mounts don’t always want to move. The goal is to put the podium mount on each side, and get them loosely matched to fit the bases you installed previously. I only needed to push it in 2-3″ on each side to get it to fit. The underside of the load bars has an adjustable piece to set how far in the mount goes. The base will slide into the load bar like so: You want the part I’m not holding in the picture. When you take these out of the box, there are two parts held together with tape. Attach the Rapid Podium mounts to the load bars (If that last sentence means nothing to you, that’s good it means your mind didn’t even conceive the bad idea I had for how it was supposed to go together.)ĭo not put the end caps in the box on yet they’d just be in the way for the next step. Don’t attempt to thread the whole thing inside. Note that it has little feet that snap into the channel. Partly assemble the load barsĪll you should do at this point is put the long rubber strip in the top. I never got the rubber boots to sit quite flush. That’s normal the other pieces are angled to make it all work. Note that this whole assembly is going to look ridiculously crooked. One will obviously fit and the other won’t. Note that the rubber pieces have separate shapes for front and back. The rubber should sit between you and the metal post. Also, place the rubber boot over it, like so: Secure it with a washer and nut from the package. Place them on the bolt, with the “24” facing you, so that the back angles away from you. The metal bracket snaps into the larger piece. Once those bolts are in, make four of these: That die is only to fix the threads it doesn’t stay in the car. I didn’t see a 5mm bit in the box, but there was one in the Rapid Podium box. You screw that in with a larger 5mm hex bit, and then unscrew it, leaving pristine threads. They include a die that you can use to perfect the threads: If the bolts aren’t going in, that’s fine. One end of the bolt is wider in a small section that’s the bit that goes into the roof screw-holes. The mounting point covers on the BMW swivel up to reveal the sockets, but don’t come off. Having a little Swedish ancestry was insufficient to intuit what they meant some of the time.įirst, screw these bolts into each of the four mounting points on the roof. Have you ever assembled something from Ikea? You know how the illustrations give you a vague sense of what you want to accomplish, but don’t quite tell you how to get there? That’s how I felt the whole time I was doing this, and then I realized that Thule and Ikea are both Swedish companies. Then, you’re going to want to assemble the AeroBlades, and loosely secure them to the “Rapid Podium”:įinally, you’ll attach that whole mix to the mounting kit you bolted to the car in the first step. This will leave you posts the rest attaches to: The rest of the post will go into much more detail, but you’re going to want to accomplish the following.įirst, you’ll install the vehicle-specific mounting kit, “Kit 3089” in this case. You can mostly install the vehicle-specific kit first, but then you start needing to meld the other kits together. What was totally unclear to me when I was figuring all of this out is that you really can’t just do one box at a time. Apparently, there’s a reason they include the instructions. My plans were quickly foiled when I realized I hadn’t even started with the right box of equipment. They pop up like so, revealing slots you can screw into. I mean, how hard can it be? The car even has these flip-up mounting points: Kit 3089, the vehicle-specific kit for securing to the roof.īecause I’m a guy, I started by assuming I didn’t need the directions.460R, Rapid Podium, the base onto which the load bars attach.ARB47, Thule AeroBlade, 47″, “load bars” - the actual roof rack bars.The Thule assembly for this model came in three separate boxes: I believe all of the 2010/2011 and newer 5-series cars will fit into that category. My car’s a 2012 BMW 535i, a member of the “F10” series/class. I figured I’d document the process, for my sanity when I go to repeat this next year, and for anyone else who’s looking at installing these. My loving relatives gifted me an Thule AeroBlade roofrack, to celebrate me turning really old and also no longer having a car large enough to shove a Christmas tree in the back of.
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