How to stop roof rack noise

If there is one complaint that you'll hear from roof rack owners at least once, it's about the annoying noise some cross bars make. It is enough to drive anyone nuts. The problem is worse on the older square and round bars but the new profiled bars can suffer the same fate. We'll show you how to stop, or at a minimum significantly reduce the whisteling from your noisy roof racks.

Quick Solutions

The problem: Why does my roof rack make a noise?

The wind noise we hear from some roof racks is known as Aeolian noise and is produced by wind when it passes over or through objects. If the surface the wind passes over has a consistent shape, the disturbance becomes tonal and at certain frequencies very annoying.

The amount of noise depends on the speed of the airflow (how fast you are driving) and the drag coefficient of the cross bar. The higher the drag coefficient, the more noise is created. If you compare the different shapes of cross bars, there is a masive difference in the drag coefficient between them. A square bar has a drag coefficient of about 1.05 a sphere is around 0.47 and an airfoil is as little as 0.04.

The secret to reducing the noise from a roof rack is by either diverting or disturbing the airflow around the cross bar.

The Solutions

Wind fairing

The first option is to add a wind fairing. Most manufacturers have one in their product line-up. A wind fairing is a plastic shield attaches to the front cross bar and attempts to divert airflow over and away from the bar to reduce wind noise and drag. Using a wind fairing will definetely help in reducing wind noise, but let's face it, it's just another piece of flimsy kit that gets in the way of loading and unloading your gear.

Disturb the airflow

Most of the premium racks comes with some type of textured rubber insert that disturbs the airflow and breaks up the frequency of the Aeolian noise we mentioned earlier. This helps reduce windnoise significantly.

But what about a square or round bar? We recommend using padded cross bar pads. Wrapping the cross bars in pads also disturbs the airflow over and around the bars thereby reducing the humming or whistling noise from a naked roof rack cross bar. An added benefit is that the pads serve as protection when strapping surfboards, SUPs or any other flat piece of gear to your roof. In many cases the padding also reduce side to side movement.

If you want to go low-tech, try wrapping some bungee cord in a spiral around your cross bars. This does an amazing job of bringing down the noise. And it's a fraction of the price of a new profiled bar.

Get a foil bar

The new aero foil cross bars provides a significant improvement in roof rack noise. The Thule Aeroblade and Rhino-Rack Vortex bars both feature noise reducing strips that makes them almost silent in many applications.

But what about a square or round bar? We recommend using padded cross bar pads. Wrapping the cross bars in pads also disturbs the airflow over and around the bars thereby reducing the humming or whistling noise from a naked roof rack cross bar. An added benefit is that the pads serve as protection when strapping surfboards, SUPs or any other flat piece of gear to your roof. In many cases the padding also reduce side to side movement.

If you want to go low-tech, try wrapping some bungee cord in a spiral around your cross bars. This does an amazing job of bringing down the noise. And it's a fraction of the price of a new profiled bar.

Use edge bars

This is something often overlooked when trying reduce roof rack noise. If you have a choice choose edge bars instead of load bars. Load bars are a good choice when you are moving heavy or large loads since it offers a larger surface area and therefore load capacity. Unfortunately it’s this additional surface area, especially when it extends past the rack’s foot/tower, that adds to roof rack noise.

Thule 959520 WingBar Edge

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Roof Rack Buyer's Guide

Not sure which roof rack to buy for your car?

The future

A noisy roof rack can be very unpleasant and eliminating the noise should be a priority. With whisper quiet electric vehicles becoming mainstream manufacturers will have to step up their game to develop products that are quieter untill hopefully one day the noise from the roof will be a thing of the past. In the meantime, check out our Roof Rack Buyers Guide to find the right roof rack for you.

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