I recently moved about 5 hours from my old house, and in the last few weeks I've been criss-crossing the state to load up straggler stuff, do a walk-through with the property manager, etc. When I'm driving around the local area, I don't carry my roof top spare, but on long trips I keep it mounted just in case. As a result, I had my spare and Thule 696 mounted for about a month and a half solid, and did lots of miles during that time. When I finally did remove the basket a couple weeks ago, I found that the cross bars (which I leave attached to the basket for ease of mounting) were super loose.
I let it go at the time, but decided to check it out last night before I headed out this morning on a long trip. When I removed the covers over the mounting brackets, I found that all four plastic knobs that tighten the nuts on the T-bolts had broken, and that the nuts had all backed out to within 2-3 threads of completely falling off!!!I ratcheted the nuts back down for now but will probably go back and add some Loctite later.
So for anybody with these racks, especially if you keep it on all the time, recommend you check your mounts frequently!
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