Interior/Exterior Magnetic caps for OEM roof rack
Magnetic caps for OEM roof rack
I posted a reply for someone who needed a pic of the plastic caps on the OEM roof rack and I thought of sharing a a mod on the caps to prevent losing it while driving.
The steps involved is basically epoxy gluing a thin neodymium magnet inside the cap (preferably in the middle) and placing a felt pad like so:

mine looks different because:
1) it's not centered because i thought placing the magnet closer to the screwed base of the rack would provide a stronger magnetic pull. It turns out, the strength of the magnet will pull from the metal of the roof, but it doesn't matter because its a strong pull, which leads me to:
2) the force of the pull and my impatience caused the magnetics to separate from the cap since pull from the roof = epoxy shear. Unfortunately, a bare magnet on a bare roof means you have to slide across the paint to get some leverage to pick it up (Neodymium magnets are no joke) and resulted in some fine scratches towards the sunroof. Pick a direction if this happens to you. I therefore picked up a stronger epoxy, let it actually cure for 48 hours and places furry felt pad from Home Depot (the kind that you use soften drawer closings) in case the epoxy ever fails, the felt will be softer and provide leverage. It's holding on since then, so no issues. before this mod, i lost two caps from road vibrations since the caps just basically slide on and can get rattled loose and fly away.

The steps involved is basically epoxy gluing a thin neodymium magnet inside the cap (preferably in the middle) and placing a felt pad like so:

mine looks different because:
1) it's not centered because i thought placing the magnet closer to the screwed base of the rack would provide a stronger magnetic pull. It turns out, the strength of the magnet will pull from the metal of the roof, but it doesn't matter because its a strong pull, which leads me to:
2) the force of the pull and my impatience caused the magnetics to separate from the cap since pull from the roof = epoxy shear. Unfortunately, a bare magnet on a bare roof means you have to slide across the paint to get some leverage to pick it up (Neodymium magnets are no joke) and resulted in some fine scratches towards the sunroof. Pick a direction if this happens to you. I therefore picked up a stronger epoxy, let it actually cure for 48 hours and places furry felt pad from Home Depot (the kind that you use soften drawer closings) in case the epoxy ever fails, the felt will be softer and provide leverage. It's holding on since then, so no issues. before this mod, i lost two caps from road vibrations since the caps just basically slide on and can get rattled loose and fly away.

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