Thule Touring 780 Roof Box
24th Nov 2014
Introduction
This is a great piece of kit which we borrowed to take on a week’s trip down south, avoiding our usual trick of ramming our medium sized car to the gunwales again.
Fitting
Lifting the box onto the roof of the car is possible for one person, but easier with two if you want to avoid clunking it against the paintwork. Once on the bars it’s a doddle to slide it into place so that the slots for the brackets line up with the bars. The slots are fairly long meaning that there is some flexibility in the positioning of your bars. Once lined up, you poke the metal clamps down through the slots and tighten the large plastic screws to clamp the claws onto the bars. The clamps are designed to fit both standard box section bars as well as the wider aero bars. Once you’ve done it a couple of times it takes less than a minute to do each of the four clamps.
Use
The first thing you notice on packing is that the box is generously wide inside and the roofbar fittings, although they do protrude a little on the inside, do not interfere a lot with the internal space available. We were able to put 4 good sized kit bags sideways on with a little room to spare. Closing it is a doddle, unless you trap something in edge, which is fairly easy! Cleverly, the box is openable from either side of the car with a double hinge, which means you can always access the box from the pavement side (the same key works for a lock on each side of the car).
Driving
Driving with the box on felt OK. No real problem with wind or weather and we went through quite a lot. It felt stable and streamlined at speed on motorways.
Robustness!
Unfortunately we drove into the unmarked barrier of a seaside car-park, having forgot about the box. On first inspection, the box was caved in completely and looked wrecked, but when I opened it up, I was able to very easily pop it up and the original shape came back immediately. With the box damaged like this, we drove 200 miles back mostly in the rain and with only a strip of duct tape on the inside of the 2 lateral splits (each of about 6 inches) we got no rain in the box at all. Later on I fixed the cracks from inside with a fibre-glass repair kit and it looked as good as new.
Summary
So overall, despite our having mistreated the box unforgivably, it stood up to heavy wear, was easy to use and easy to access when on the car with outstanding space. Retails at £299.95.
5 stars!
More Information
Technical Spec
Volume (l) 420 l
Length (cm) 196 cm
Width (cm) 78 cm
Height (cm) 43 cm
Load capacity (kg) 50 kg
Weight (kg) 15 kg
Mounting system FastClick
Box opening Dual-Side
Foldable for easy storage
Central lock
Load capacity Skis 5-7
Load capacity Snowboards 4-5
Max length of skis (cm) 180