Has anyone tried to remove their 07 outlander roof rails yet? Does it increase mpg or efficient aerodynamics if I remove them?

 

There was a big talk about htis before. When you remove your rails, your going to have holes in your roof to deal with.

 

Aerodynamics of the rails should be pretty good. Most vehicles these days have them and i haven't seen or heard any issues with rails from any automaker.If you add the cross bars it might have a slight effect. That being said I would doubt that your MPG would be affected by removal of the rails. Edmunds did a pretty cool test regarding driving style, loads, tire pressure, a/c vs windows affect on overall MPG. Theytested it witha full-size pickup, mid/large SUV, and a sedan. The results are below.

"Overall Fuel Economy Results
If you are currently an aggressive driver (cruising speeds from 75-85 mph, constantly accelerating and changing lanes and braking sharply) and you decided to calm down (driving with the cruise control set to 65 mph), your fuel economy would improve an average of 35 percent.

If you want to drive at higher speeds (77 mph with cruise control on) but you eliminate midrange acceleration, lane changes and harsh braking, your fuel economy will improve from 12.5 percent.

Adding a roof rack (cross rails) and driving with cruise control at 65 mph caused a 1 percent loss in fuel economy than driving at the same speed without cross rails.

Adding luggage to the roof rack and driving with cruise control set to 65 mph caused a 21 percent loss in fuel economy.

Driving with the windows open instead of using the air-conditioner gave us a fuel economy increase of 9.5 percent.

Driving a pickup truck with the tailgate down (with cruise control set for 65 mph) brought us a 1 percent improvement in fuel economy.

Driving with tires underinflated by 25 percent caused a loss of fuel economy on an average of 3.75 percent.

These results apply to the steady-state cruise portion of a highway trip on flat and level ground in calm conditions. We didn't test these effects in a city driving situation this time out, as we were not able to create a repeatable city driving pattern. We'll leave that for another day."

Here's a link to the whole Edmunds test. http://www.edmunds.com/advice/fuelec...8/article.html

Personally, I plan to us a hitch carrier instead of the roof rails whenever possible, which should produce a lot less drag than rooftop carry and hopefully keep MGP high.

 

1 mpg loss with roof rails doesn't mean anything because of the error +/- 3 mpg. Conditions are never the same to get accurate reading. Conclusion is that roof rails don't impact mpg.

 

As a niceaddition to your car's safety feature set, once you accidentally roll over onto the roof, assuming winter time and lots of snow, your car will keep sliding nicely onthe roof railsmuch like onskis... hehe, kidding.
I seriously think if you remove them it will reduce overal stiffness/strength of the chassis. It should be an integral part of the car as designed/intended, so don't bother.

 

want to remove mine also. im not using it anyways anddon't like the color. for sure, removing it will reduce some drag, weight andwill lower center of gravity. but holes on the roof isn't good, sun+rain+snow=rust. we need a prettygood DIY kit to cover them.

JC

 

I want to remove mine too. Anyone knows how?

 

Follow the instruction, but look the antlip's post about the holes. . .

 

...i took mine off the second day i had it.

there are three mounting spots per side that would have to be ground down and filled... ......then repainted.

i just sanded , primed , painted them satin black. they look much better that way with the dark gray body color i have on my xls.

 

I think the Outlander has a softer and light weight roof made of aluminum. If a roll over happens, is the roof rails that will suffer from the impact, because thats mounted on the side where it can be support by the whole car's frame.

Plus, it would be an hassle to remove, fill the whole and paint the roof again. If you dont like the colour, you can just paint the rail itself.

Just my 2 cent...