5 Easy Ways to Reduce Roof Rack Wind Noise

One of the biggest issues with adding a roof rack to your vehicle can be the wind noise that it causes. This can be extremely frustrating if you go on long road trips or just embarrassing if you have someone in your car with you.

With a roof rack, you can’t always completely eliminate the noise. Here are some of the best options we have found to reduce wind noise from your roof rack drastically.

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Wind Deflector/Fairing

If your roof rack didn’t come with a wind deflector, this can be a great option for reducing some of the pesky wind noise that roof racks generate. Wind deflectors are an aerodynamic modification that can be installed on most roof racks that simply redirect the wind away from the crossbars and your cargo. This is extremely helpful if you’re noticing whistling while driving but you may still notice some noise from heavy winds or at highway speeds. A complaint that comes from wind deflectors is that they may vibrate, and this may be due to the materials used to create them. If you go with a lighter-weight deflector, it can vibrate against the roof of your vehicle. You can solve this by adjusting the deflector to sit higher or flush on the roofline depending on your vehicle, it will just take some testing to figure out which one works best for you. You can also add some weather stripping to avoid the noise. Personally, on my Toyota Tacoma, I have a DV8 Offroad Roof Rack and had to adjust the wind deflector to the lowest setting. There are many universal wind deflectors such as the Inno Universal Wind Fairing that fits most vehicles and roof racks.

Weatherstripping

Weatherstripping can be purchased in a lot of places and some are even roof rack specific. What weatherstripping is good at is reducing whistling by disrupting the airflow and also reducing vibrations as it adds the softening properties of rubber between your wind deflector or crossbars and your vehicle.

Paracord

A super cheap modification you can do to reduce some of the wind noise is wrapping paracord around the wind deflector or the crossbars. This works by disrupting the wind that is hitting your roof rack and does not allow it hit certain frequencies that cause that whistling noise. The awesome part about paracord is that you can use it for a ton of things as well as you can get it for super cheap.

Tightening it Down

A simple but often overlooked way to reduce wind noise is to make sure that everything on your roof rack is tightened down. This means checking all the bolts connected to your vehicle as well as the crossbars. Also make sure if you are carrying cargo, that it is tightened down securely.

Edge Bars

There are mainly two different types of crossbars; load bars and edge bars. Load bars are made to carry a lot more weight but are usually less aerodynamic due to their square shape and cause wind noise. If you don’t carry heavy things often on your roof rack, a great option would be to get some edge bars. Edge bars are usually circular or oval and are a lot more aerodynamic than load bars. The only downside to switching to edge bars is that you may not be able to carry as much weight with your roof rack.