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- 2013 Mazda 5 GS
Hey there fellow 3 sedan drivers,
My wife and I bought a 2007 Mazda 3 sedan a few years ago and, being a Mazda, the car has been solid ever since. But now that we have a 1 year-old daughter and still desire to go traveling and can't afford to upgrade to a larger vehicle at the moment, I thought I'd see how easy it would be to add a roof-mounted cargo basket to our car.... on a budget!
I told myself I wouldn't spend any more than $200 (I always enjoy a challenge). I decided to start off by searching for a cargo basket — If I couldn't find one, I wouldn't even bother with building cross bars. I probably spent a good 2 months looking around online... Amazon.ca/.com, eBay, Kijiji, Craigslist, and the forums. Patience paid off. While I was browsing Kijiji, I came across a Yakima Loadwarrior WITH the extension (which I'm not using) and fairing (cracked, but still repairable/usable), all for 100 bucks! The basket didn't come with any mounts, but that was okay. Plain old U-bolts ended up being a better solution in the end.
Next, I got to work figuring out how I was going to build the cross bars to mount the basket. After a few trips to Lowes, Home Depot and Canadian Tire and, again, browsing the handy Interwebs to source parts needed, I bought the following parts to build the ultimate budget cross bars:
• One 8' x 1" round aluminum tubing from Home Depot ($20)
• Four black plastic end caps from Lowes ($5)
• Four "buck-a-puck" hockey pucks from Canadian Tire ($4)
• Four 1" inner diameter x 2.5" U-bolts from Fastenal ($8)
• Four M6 x 60mm set socket screws from Fastenal ($5)
• Two sets of black 1" rifle sight clamp mounts from eBay ($26)
• ABS plastic adhesive from Canadian Tire ($8)
• M6 thread tap ($6)
Total: $82
Total including Loadwarrior: $182
The build/install
Now, I managed to have a few things on hand that allowed me to complete the project (gloss black spray paint, sand paper, rubber foam tape and appropriate tools to install the rack), otherwise the total might have tipped the scales to just over 200 bucks. But that's still an amazing bargain when you consider you'd have to fork out over $800 to buy the roof rack and cargo basket from Yakima directly!
Of course, the benefit of buying everything brand new and ready to bolt on is spending maybe a total of 2 hours in the garage to install it (1 hour for install, 1 hour admiring the finished product, taking pictures, drooling, etc.). But, in this case, the whole process of building the cross bars took me quite a while since I don't have all the tools and machinery at my fingertips due to living in an apartment highrise. I was able to measure, cut and drill the tubing and repair the fairing on my balcony. The rest was done in my father-in-law's shop about 45 minutes away over the course of a couple of evenings.
• Using a band saw, I cut the hockey pucks to shape as rubber feet/spacers for the scope mounts (cross bar clamps) to sit on.
• I drilled and tapped a M6 threaded hole in each piece of puck and bolted them into the existing mount points on the roof of the car.
• I had to drill and tap two of the scope mounts as the other two already came with M6 threaded holes. Once those were drilled, they easily screwed securely onto the remaining portion of the set screw sticking up from the top of the puck pieces.
• Each cross bar was placed into the mounts (loosely).
• I threw the basket on top and squared everything up. U-bolts were inserted through drilled holes in cross bar tubing to hold cargo basket securely in place (I used rubber foam tape as a cushion between the basket and cross bars to eliminate vibration noise.
• I aligned everything once more and tightened all the screws and bolts!
Voila! Mazda 3 sedan with cargo basket on roof. The only thing I need to do is shorten the length of the U-bolts as they sit about a centimeter away from the car roof. Once the basket is loaded, the U-bolts will surely make contact with paint... not cool.
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