CX-50 OEM Thule Crossbars are LOUD

I drove the CX-50 yesterday, turbo premium plus, and the dealer had the Thule crossbars installed already.

Heads up to anyone thinking about adding these… the are very loud at highway speeds! Imagine a whistling noise.

I have the OEM bars on my Mazda 3 now and they are not that loud and more importantly don’t make a super loud constant whistling noise.

So the next question is, how long will it take rack manufacturers to have different bars for the CX-50? Or is the rail system on the car already compatible?
 
If the crossbars of CX50 are easily removable, it might be a good idea to install them only when you need them.

The crossbars on CX5 are hard to install. Luckily, they are not that noisy.
 
If the crossbars of CX50 are easily removable, it might be a good idea to install them only when you need them.

The crossbars on CX5 are hard to install. Luckily, they are not that noisy.

I like to leave everything installed so it’s ready to go, as I’m always doing something that requires the racks: skiing, or mountain biking.

I’m looking at my crossbars now and the shape of the bar is much more aerodynamic than what I observed on the Thule CX-50 rack. Maybe that’s part of the difference.
 
It's possible that the dealer installed the crossbars backwards. A quick google search shows that for many Subaru/Mazda/Honda etc. owners who were experiencing excessive wind noise, the problem was that the dealer installed the crossbars incorrectly. With the CX-50 being so new, I wouldn't put it past the dealership to make this kind of mistake.
 
It's possible that the dealer installed the crossbars backwards. A quick google search shows that for many Subaru/Mazda/Honda etc. owners who were experiencing excessive wind noise, the problem was that the dealer installed the crossbars incorrectly. With the CX-50 being so new, I wouldn't put it past the dealership to make this kind of mistake.
That’s hilarious. This dealer also would not sell me the vehicle without their already-installed $4k aftermarket tires and wheels.

Better avoid these guys entirely.
 
Also cheaper crossbars, even from thule and yakima are round or square and tends to whistle at speed. The more aerodynamic bars are better in that regard.

The easy solution for whistling crossbars is to wrap a cord in spiral fashion across the bar. Think like on old antennas:
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There's a MZD service alert regarding crossbar noise. Doesn't really provide any solution other than to advise customers to remove them when not in usage, but I found the info about the design difference between the 50's bars and the CX-5/9's interesting. The 50's bars are flatter to support usage of the add-on accessories like the platform, and I assume are better at weight distribution as a result. I'm waiting to hear from Yakima about the Ridgeline clip kit that works on the 50 as I have existing towers and Jetstream bars, so once I can purchase the right clips I'll do a test to see how noisy those are. They were pretty quiet on my CX-5, so I assume the same. Just not sure how using them might impact any desire to use the other OEM products, but of course both Yakima and Thule (and others) make comparable items including platforms etc (in fact, Thule makes a lot of the Mazda related accessories and I suspect from the design that Yakima might be behind the 50's platform).
 

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Interesting, the Cx-50 bar, if they are in fact easy to remove and install are better utility bar. The loading surface is wider and is flat left to right. The cx-5 bars are curved which makes flat items less supported.

I am the kind of person that prefers installing and removing the bars when they are easy to clip-on (but some claim to be easy and are actually a pain). I was actually going to buy something similar to these (i forget if they were thule or yakima, it might have been the ridgeline) instead of the mazda model for my CX-9, but backed out because they were double the price.

Now i have the mazda bars permanently mounted.
 
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