Has anyone here used the factory Panamera roof racks?

I took delivery of my P4S Friday evening. The dealer threw in a set of roof racks for me, and had already installed them. Driving home, I realized I had one heck of a buzzing rattle coming from what seemed like my front left door panel. I hung a u-turn and went back to the dealer.

My salesman assured me he'd test driven the car for me before delivery, and there was no such rattle. I took him for a quick drive and convinced him otherwise. His theory was that it was the roof racks setting up some sort of sympathetic vibration. Sounded like nonsense to me.

So today I took off the racks and lo and behold - silence! He was right, it really was the rack system.

So my question is - does anyone have any ideas on how to quiet this down? For now the racks are off, but I spend a lot of time shlepping my bicycle around and I will be using the racks quite a bit.

Thanks for any ideas.

DMoore
'10 P4S
'09 C2S
(both are PDKs)

 

What you've observed is very common. I have the racks for my Cayenne and leave them off for daily driving. If I want to haul the bikes, I put them on and the rack noise blends in when the acoustics from the bikes. Bottom line is you will not have a quiet ride with bikes on the roof. dave

 

I've been driving around with surfboards, skis or bikes on my car roof for over 40 years. I'm well acquainted with wind noise, whistles, etc.

BUT. These racks set up loud vibrations in the interior of the car. I'm talking about the crossbars only - I don't even have bike carriers installed, let alone bikes on the roof. Put all that crap up there and of course it'll be noisy, but I've never seen the bare crossbars set up such interior rattles. Heck, I've never had vibrations in the interior like this before - ever - on over 20 cars I've owned over the years.

Does the Cayenne do that?

DMoore
'10 P4S
'09 C2S

 

Mine create wind noise, not vibrations in the car. I'd have a chat with a good service adviser. dave

 

My roof rack is perfect. No noise as you mentioned. Something not right there!

 

As it turns out, once I mounted up my bike attachments (Euro Pitchforks from Rocky Mounts) the vibrations stopped. I see from the Panamera manual that the roof racks should have some sort of little pads at the very bottom, where they fit into the roof - and mine don't. Maybe that's the source of the problem. But with the bike attachments mounted, I guess it stiffens things up to the point that the vibrations settle down. Odd. Very odd!

DMoore
'10 P4S
'09 C2S PDK

 

Nice bike mounts, I just bought 3 myself for the Panamera after using Thule for years. Very nice product and very low profile mounts for the bike. Good to see you buy from Rocky Mounts!

Yes, those little pads were quite tempermental getting in and can easily be lost!

Glad that got rid of the noise!