I had the same deal with roof racks carrying a hang glider.  The front
cross piece was a 2" sq tube, placed to cause maximum turbulence at speed.
It settled right down after cutting a 2" cardboard tube in half longwise,
and taping the round piece onto the front of the square tube.

Turbulence kills!

Randy Bergum
1990 carat

> [Original Message]
> From: Calle Fallberg <calle.fallberg@TELIA.COM>
> To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
> Date: 6/2/2004 7:33:38 PM
> Subject: Re: Odd sounds
>
> These sounds could be a pain in the butt !
> Had a similar experience with a Thule roof rack that I used both on the
> Vanagon and my daily driver with two different sets of feet (different
> height)
> I was in a hurry when I put the rack on and after a while I started to
hear
> a deep kind of howling sound .
> It grew worse when i picked up speed , people turned and looked and my dog
> seemed to be annoyed too so I stopped to find out what the problem might
be
> !
> Found nothing so I took off again with the same sound comming back.....
> Turned out to be the end caps on my rack that was left behind in the hurry
> with the same sound as when you blow across a bottle as a result :-P
>
> Calle
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kim Brennan" <kimbrennan@MAC.COM>
> To: <vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM>
> Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 11:58 PM
> Subject: Odd sounds
>
>
> > So, I was coming back from the Memorial Day weekend, and I kept on
> > hearing odd sounds. Sort of a rumbling grumbling, vibration sound quite
> > unlike anything I had heard before. It only occured once I got above 40
> > mph, but wasn't constant. At first I was thinking maybe my front inner
> > CV was going bad (torn boot that will get replaced RSN). But the sounds
> > didn't sound right for that.
> >
> > It took me a while to finally identify the culprit. The straps holding
> > various stuff up in the luggage rack of my Westy. Seems I had tightened
> > them up just enough so that they "sang" in the wind. Gah,
> >