This will make for a very lame, very brief DIY article, but here it is anyway:
The Home Depot MacGyver Tire Holding Roof Rack™*
* It probably holds other stuff well too, like surf boards and kayaks.
- It never touches your paint.
- It easily holds the load of four wheels/tires
- It looks pretty nice (not made of wood or chain link fence or something)
- It is solid. If you try to push the tires when their mounted, the car will move. The cross beams of the rack sit behind and in front of the BMW base rack beam, rather than on top. In this way, the bars push against each other for support when you're under heavy braking or accelerating.
Cost:
Thule makes a rack similar to this that is large enough to hold all the tires. It's like $480 or something ridiculous. Yakima makes one too, and though it's less expensive, it's a bit too small for 4 18" wheels and still costs like $350ish. The Home Depot MacGyver Tire Holding Roof Rack™ will cost you about $70-$80, which includes the tools and the straps that hold down the tires.
Items to purchase:- 4x 1" thick electrical piping (10ft in the electrical section)
- 1x cross bracket (right by the pipes in the electrical section)
- Bracket/clamp thingy to connect the two items above
- Duct tape (to tape up the ends)
- Copper pipe insulation
- A hack saw and some serious blades
- Cinch downs. I bought 8. One to cinch down each tire in the center of the tire. And 4 to make a big "X" across the top of all the tires.
- 4x smaller, thinner cinch downs to tie the rack to the BMW rack.
- Zip ties.
- Little teeny bungie cords. You'll use these to strap down the excess from the large cinch downs.
- The BMW Roof Rack base system
Pics: (whole set
here)
Closeup Pics:
