Both the Mini Do More and MiniFini trailer hitch solutions are still in progress and unknown when they will be finished.

As for the Mini Do More previous solutions the are limited to 1-1/4" square Class I reciever. The problem with this is that there is not a bike rack made (at least by Thule or Yakima) that will fit this to carry more than two bikes. All the racks a both Thule and Yakima than handle 3, 4 or 5 bikes require a 2" receiver. Thus eliminating that hitch possibility for you if you need to carry three bikes.


As for the OEM Roof Racks they will carry up to 175 lbs and have been proven to work. Yes there may be a small possibility that the racks will not fit and work with your car but the fact is that Mini of Boston has put the rack on most of the Clubbie's they have sold and had no problems. Also some of the people that have complained that the rack leaked have show via pictures that the rack is not installed properly.

I also have personally seen 4 other clubmans all with different builds weeks that have rack on them that DO NOT leak. As i have stated a few times in this thread it seems to be more of an installation error than an actual problem with the parts or car.

 

Here is a picture of my Clubman and boat. The racks are OEM with a Burnham Single Scull carrier on them. The boat is a 27 foot single scull with a weight fully rigged of 43 lbs.
I have been told it looks likes a helicopter with one blade missing.

 

That's a riot! Rotate it 90 degrees, drive it down a runway, and see if your MINI takes off!

 

+1 Lets see if you can get it airborne.

 

The Yakima DoubleDown 4 and 5 and the Flipside all hold at least 4 bikes and are compatible with both hitch receiver sizes. I will likely go that route over the roof because of the 3 bike need.

Due in part to your document, I have confidence in the OEM roof rack, but I think the car is too narrow to get 3 bike carriers up there.

 

Unfortunately i do not have pictures but i had a 17" wide box and two bike carriers on top of mine with no problem. I think you should be able to get at least 3 if not 4 bikes up there. Granted the center 1 or two may not be easy to get up there but i personally would feel much more confident about hte bikes on the roof than on the DoubleDown.

By the way the DoubleDown has a weight limit per bike of 30 lbs. Be sure to check the weight of your bikes before putting them on the rack.

I'm not sure what types of bikes you are riding but the average midrange mountain bike weighs in at about 33-34 pounds. The lower the cost the more they weigh.

 

I submitted an email question via the OL contact feature. I was surprised when I received a phone call yesterday from Mini with a response. The guy was real nice (wrote his name down but left it at home.) Unfortunately he did not have an update other than he went to Engineering specifically on this as it is a "very active topic/issue internally for the Clubman." They know this is a HUGE deal for clubman owners (maybe we fit the profile for rack ownership??). I think he found out what was going on but couldn't tell me anything. I've read all the posts on this issue but couldn't gather/identify what Mini is telling anyone what THE issue is. I even threw out there the ill-sized internal bracket/leaking suicide door topics but he didn't bite much other than saying that Mini owners are very very informed. I mentioned this forum/thread and he said he was going to take a looksie.

I get the impression that Mini is very close to the chest on things that happen internally. I know Apple and Google are the same way. Having worked at Google, I know 3/4 of info posted externally is gunk but 1/4 is golden. Challenge is separating the gunk from the gold.

Anyway, he did ask for my address so maybe he'll send me some swag as i wait for my week 28 clubman. He was kind enough to confirm my order as well as my build week for me. He promised to put a tickler on the issue and update me when he is allowed to.

I'll just keep driving my 06 MC until my Clubby arrives. BTW, I have a Yakima on my current car but looking at the roofline of the Clubman at the dealership tells me that is a non-starter for the Clubman.

Cheers,
Peter

 

Good for you Peter! The more heat the better because this is a big issue. I'm going to send an email tomorrow myself - hadn't bothered because I've been so much in touch with my own dealership and have had a copy of the original advice that went out from MINI. You're right, they do keep it all close to the vest.

Many thanks for posting - and when is your beauty of and MCC LB/Silver due might I ask?

 

bump

 

Well here we go. I would be willing to be that 99 out of 100 clubbies can have the roof rack installed easily with no problems and that last one may just take some minor tweaking.

Here are pictures of my clubbie with two (2) 11'1" kayaks on the top.

Roof racks and kayaks weight is 168 lbs just under the suggested weight limit.

Kayaks 49 lbs each
paddles and gear 15 lbs each
Rack and holders 20 lbs each cross bar

And i still got better than 30MPG (just barely).

We went thru torrential down pours on our way to our destination and no leaks.

 

Looks great and the tow hook tie down is nice too. Our Club came off the boat in NYNJ yesterday, left a VM w/our MA to confirm parts in stock for rack installation, waiting to hear back.

 

Yes it does look terrific...very clean with the tow hooks as tie-downs.

Your installation appears to work flawlessly. What do you base your bet that 99% of the clubmans out there will work?

I sure want mine to...

 

Earlier in this thread i mention having spoken to an accessories guru from Mini while at MTTS 2008. From what he was telling me and from conversations with other clubman owners over the past few weeks i have not found one that leaked.

The only ones that i could find that leaked all showed me picture of how the rack was mounted and all of them were installed incorrectly. Two have reported back that once installed correctly there was not leak problem. The ohters have not reported back.

ALso Mini ov Boston has put rack on over 90% of the clubman they have sold and had not problem with any of them. The probability of the ones that they din not install it on being the only one to leak is far fetched.

 

So your take is that MINI will ultimately say that there is no problem with the OEM rack?

I was hoping that they might come out with a "track", that would allow the tower supports more location flexibility, to be mounted on the roof as a solution...probably just wishful thinking.

 

The installation does look good, but I'm waiting for a full fix. I ordered the rack and sent it back since installing it on my clubbie would have ripped up the paint job to get it on there (due to the angle of the bracket). Another poster had a good solution to dissassemble the ends of the rack and put them on first (in order to get it mounted) but I would like to be able to remove the racks from time to time and the constant dissassemble and reassemble would be a pain in the a$$.

 

I'm glad to see that someone else besides us, has had NO issues with the roof rack (to repeat - we installed the rack ourselves in less than 30 minutes).

I wonder if everyone realizes that there IS a front rail and back rail - they are slightly different. If you get them on wrong, I could see there would be a leaking issue.

Donna

 

Yep, the front ones were obviously marked on the racks I received and still wouldn't fit without ripping the edge paint off. I even tried to reverse them but it was no use. I think it was posted in this thread that there was a change in either the rack or the roof slot at some point which is why some people (like yourself) had no problem with installation while others are having issues.

 

I'm having my car diverted to Boston so Schatzy can install my rack...

 

There is an option number 356 "Roof Rails" on the JCW list for September. No one has been able to tell me any more about it. My dealer sees that is in not on the orderable option list for July or August and will not have the orderable options for September orders until late July or early August. An dfrom what they have told me if it does not show up on the list then they still will have not info on it.

BMW Group is great for putting something out here on literature and then never following thru with it.

This may be what you are looking for an it may not. The problem i see with the Roof Rails Option is that the rails will probably have to sit between the sunroof and the upturn at the edge of the roof. And from what i have seen there (after having my headliner pulled down some) there is very little support for anything like this, so it may have very little weight capacity.

All of this is only speculation on my part until the option is released.

For all of those people that say it will rip up the paint please see the sticky thread that has the instructions i wrote up.

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...d.php?t=145279

If the rack is not prepared properly YES it will scratch the paint. BUT if it is prepared properly then you should be able to put it on in about 30-40 minutes the first time and then be able to take it on and off in less than 10 minutes.

For instance the pictures with the kayaks on the car show how many straps there was there to be taken off. I had the straps off the kayaks, kayaks off the rack and the rack off the car in less than 10 minutes. Okay the kayaks were on the grass next to the car and it took me another 20 minutes to get them put back on their racks in the garage, but the racks on the Clubman are actually very easy to take on and off once installed properly the first time.

I actually find it easier to put on and off than the racks on both my 03 BMW 525IT wagon and my 99 Dodge Pickup. Especially the going back on part.

According to the Accessories Guru form Mini USA that i spoke with in person at MTTS 20008 Boston. The problem that they have seen is actually under the roof skin of the car not with the external rack. There were a few cars made with a mounting bracket under the roof that they believe was not sized properly. Only off by less than .032" (a very small amount). The problem he indicated was the it was production error in that one piece and they do not actually know what build dates were of the cars that had that piece in them. They also did not know how many of there pieces there were installed in cars. So from that i speculate that it could be as little as 10 cars but as much at 1000 cars. Even Mini does not seem to know.

taskmaster: I will try to take a video of how the rack is supposed to go on and see if i can post it on youtube or something. It may be a few days before i get this done.

Also have you already cut/pulled the openings in your rain gutters for the rack? If not this part i will not be able to show exactly but i will do the best i can since mine have already been done.

hoonu - send it by i will fix it up for you.

 

Hi Schatzy, thanks for your reply. Yes, I already removed the 4 rubber pieces from edge so I'm good to go with that portion of the install. I'll take a look at your installation instructions to see how you are dealing with the bracket issue since this was the biggest problem I ran into with the install.

 

If it weren't so important to so many of us, you'd have to laugh at all this. Honestly, it's pretty darn pathetic that we all have to hear from a fellow owners rather than directly from our dealerships - that said, they all clearly aren't not as in the know as Schatzy's source at MTTS.

I think the dealers should xray all our Clubman roofs so we could feel comfortable getting on with this and not have any fears of lack of recourse if our MINIs were the "few" with the underlying "issues".

The saga continues. Many thanks to the reliable posters.

 

There are two big reasons for the lack of knowledge by MA's and SA's (of course this doe not apply to all MA's and SA's)

1. They do not care about the customer after collecting all the money for the car. ( and i feel that this is definately the number one cause)

2. They do not have the ambition to research the problems or concerns of the customer. Some times this may be due to being overworked at their job so they do not have time to do the research or lack of enjoying their job.

On the other hand there are some MA's and SA's such as the ones at my dealership that not only take the time to answer questions and solve problems but also disregard what the manufactures advice says at times when they know it to be wrong. Again my dealer has been and is still installing racks on clubbies with no problem. In fact they have stolen at least one person from another dealer due to the other dealers refusal to put a rack on the car. After it was put on it worked just as it should with no leaks. Not only did the other dealer lose the sale of the rack but the customer is now going to drive the extra 45 minutes to get his car serviced.

 

Ok gang, just got off the phone w/my MA at MINI Inskip, my Clubman will be coming in within a week or so.

First things first, she has been a great MA - very happy w/Inskip as well.

However, she informed me that Inskip is not installing racks on the Clubman as a new rack will be coming out. She said that I could pay for it up front and they would install it when the new parts arrive. I asked whether they could install the existing rack or if they had a timetable on the new one, she is going to get back to me.

I do not plan to pay for anything unless it is attached to the vehicle at the time of purchase - these are the options as I see them:

1.) Find a different dealer who will do the installation post purchase
2.) Get the parts and install myself - Schatzy, what do you drink for beer?
3.) Wait for new rack and have Inskip install them
3a.) Inskip comes back and is willing to install existing rack

Still have a week, but a bit frustrating that there is not a universal/consistent response from MINI and their respective dealers on how to proceed.

 

I Also called my SA and MA today and was told they still didn't want to sell it because MiniUSA told them not to. I think I may just go get one and tell them it's for the r56

 

Did your MA say when this new rack was going to appear?

Inquiring minds need to know.

P.S. Let's not kid ourselves - or anyone else - MINI wants to sell their racks and make money - so if they are not, there's a reason - and it's probably self protection. This is not to negate Schatzy's installation directions or the fact that there are a number who've been quite successful with their racks.