How to Use Thule Products for Roof Top Tents
Stock vs Thule Products
Contents
Introduction
Read this before you go out and start buying products for your camping setup. We’ve done the research and put our setup together. It doesn’t matter what roof-top tent you use this should be similar for many.
Thule System with Roof-top Tent
We have used our iKamper 4 person roof-top tent on our Land Rover Discovery 2 and our Toyota Seqouia, which is the only vehicle we use it on these days. For both vehicles we had to purchase aftermarket cross bars because the stock cross bars on both vehicles do not meet the weight capacity for a roof top tent and they also can’t move into the position required to attach the tent too.
iKamper on Disco 2 using Thule Cross Bars and Thule High Gutter Foot Pack
Aftermarket Crossbars: Thule
For both the Land Rover Discovery 2 and Toyota Sequoia we purchased Thule Cross Bars. Land Rover has a high roof so we required Thule High Gutter Foot Pack in conjunction with Thule cross bars. For the Toyota Sequoia we only required Cross Bars.
We keep the roof-top tent attached to the cross bars and remove the cross bars (with the tent attached) at the end of camping season. We raise the whole system into the ceiling of our garage that we made a pulley system for. This way we just need to lower and re-attach the cross bars vs needing to re-attach the tent (takes way more time). The Sequoia stock bars and Thule bars don’t touch and we use the stock bars for our ski box in the winter.
iKamper with Thule Cross Bars Attached in Pulley Storage System
Why did we choose Thule vs others?
It’s good quality but it also locks. You can get the same key to work in all the Thule products you buy. So we have the Thule Cross Bars, Thule Awning and Thule Bike rack and only need one key! There products are made to work together so that also helps keep things simple.
Shade and Rain Protection: Thule Awning
Our iKamper has an Annex add on but it’s big and time consuming to attach. We wanted quick shade or rain protection and not for only camping but also when we stop for lunch. We purchased the Thule Hideaway Awning (10 x 8 feet size) which required the purchase of Thule Awning Adapter for the Thule Cross Bars. More details on the awning and video can be found here.
Bike Rack: Thule T2 Pro XTR plus 2 more bike holders
Thule bike racks can be added on, we have the Thule Pro XTR, you purchse the 2 bike holder and can add on another 2. I think you can add on for 6 bikes but that would be huge and potentially hard to lift up and down. This isn’t required for a camping set up but many people take bikes when camping and road, mountain and fat bikes all fit so it’s pretty easy to use.
This covers all the Thule products we purchased to attach our roof-top tent and we find useful when camping. We’ve had all the products for several years and are very happy with the ease of use.
The full set-up on the Toyota Sequoia; Thule cross bars, Thule hideaway awning, Thule hitch bike rack, iKamper roof top tent, iKamper annex
