Thinking about adding rooftop box to the LC - though not fully committed to the idea. I see a lot of pros for our use case, but also some cons, and wanted to see if the group had any input to add to our thinking.
There are three of us - two adults and an 8-year-old kid. We did a fair amount of camping last year, mostly weekends at state parks around Ohio. We also took a week long trip to the northern tip of Michigan's LP. Hauling capacity in the LC was fine for weekend trips, but was a challenge for our Michigan trip. With the plug-in cooler, tent, luggage, and other camping gear, we had to Tetris everything in place, and use the digital rearview mirror to see. If we had a wet tent to deal with at any point, we might have had a problem. For this summer, we have been kicking around the idea of a two-week driving trip to the west coast, car camping in some national parks along the way. We could maybe get by as-is, but it would be nice to have a little more room.
I haul bikes on the hitch with my Kuat rack, so a roof box seems like the best option for adding cargo capacity. I've had good experience with Thule racks in the past for hauling bikes up top (and occasionally lumber) on previous vehicles, and would be open to Yakima as well. I have factory roof rails, but no crossbars - so those are an added expense. I'd definitely like a lockable hardshell carrier, it would be nice for it to be reasonably secure so we aren't too worried about our stuff if we are parked somewhere for a few days.
On the con side, I have concerns about MPG impact. We normally average 23-24 mpg on long trips - anyone have experience with what kind of impact we would likely see? I assume more noise is inevitable, but can deal with that unless it's completely excessive. I would likely only have the box and crossbars installed on the truck when they are needed. How annoying are these to install and remove? It's also way up there, I'd be the only one that could reach to load and unload. We also might run into clearance issue in parking garages and drive-thrus.
I also want to think about it in terms of long-term value. The box would have use in the future beyond our trip this summer, including for our weekend camping trips - but it's a fairly big expense. If it really kills the mileage and is a pain to install, we're more likely to deal with a full truck or just stay in hotels. Further in the future, we've also kicked around the idea of some kind of camper (most likely a popup or something efficient to tow), which would probably negate the need for a roof box.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
