Yakima roof rack accessories and Kayak Carrier

Instead of using the Honda kayak carrier to hold my kayak to the Honda roof rack cross bars, I use a pair of Yakima Mako Shark Saddles up front and a pair of Yakima Hully Rollers in the back. The rollers really make loading my 14 foot long tandem kayak a lot easier. Both the saddles and the rollers work with ratcheting tie down straps that are provided with them. This is a great system for securing your kayak.

The problem is that Yakima does not make and does not intend ot make an adapter to mount the saddles and the rollers or any of their other accessories to the roof rack. Yakima intends to make a their own rack system for the Ridgeline.

Yakima calls these adapters Mighty Mounts and they are used to attach their hardware to your factory roof rack.

I have been using the Mighty Mounts that were made specifically for my 2002 Isuzu Rodeo that was totalled last year. They are not an exact fit and occassionlly loosen up.

Yakima does make a universal mighty mount but I get the feeling it won't work as well as one that is designed specifically the the Ridgeline cross bars.

Does anyone know if the ridgeline cross bars have the same cross section as any of the cross bars on other Honda products, like the CR-V or the Pilot. If so, then the Mighty Mounts for that vehicle shoud work just fine on the Ridgeline?

Does anyone use the Yakima Univerasl Mighty Mounts on their Ridgeline or other Honda product?

I am also hoping for a Yakima option, and will likely replace the Honda rack with a Yakima kit some time in the future. As far as I can tell, after limited research, the Ridgeline rack is pretty unique. It is wider than a lot of other racks I have found. I have looked at some competing trucks and cars to see if I could find something similar as well that might have a kit already made for it. It seems that both Thule (who apparently actually manufactured this rack) and Yakima intend to just make replacement for the entire Honda rack instead of mounts to go on top of the Honda rack. I would have preferred something that could be mounted to the existing rack as the Yakima and Thule kits generally don't look as nice as the cars integrated racks.

One reason that these companies aren't going to make accessories for the factory rack that they already have universal accessories that fit on all vehicles using the Thule or Yakima rack. They do make some for factory racks but you'll notice that they often fit a handful of different vehicles. The Thule Hull-a-ports i had on my explorer also fit the Nissan frontier, xterra, pathfinder and a few others too. My guess is they would have to be specifically designed for the Ridgeline so they probably won't do it.

Another concern is weight capacity, the factory rack only carries 110 lbs, usually the Thule or Yakima racks carry more weight. I carry a 17' and a 15' kayak on our Element's Thule rack and they total 120+ lbs, the element factory rack only holds 75 lbs.

Does anyone have pictures of the Thule rack system on an RL yet?

Thanks Captmiddy and JayOn for the feed back. I guess I'll have to look at the universal mounts from Yakima. I don't want to spend $200-400 bucks or so for the Yakima roof rack unless its absolutely necessary.

I have two 835xt Hull-A-Ports that carry my 12 ft Heritage kayaks. Each kayak weighs 52 lbs. Thule told me these carriers would fit. I mount the carriers as close to the side rail as possible. I've had no problems to date.