Yakima BigStack Boat Rack

Hey Rob Jestadt,

Thanks for your question. I checked with Yakima and I found that it will depend on whether your 2002 Ford Explorer with Factory Crossbars is the 2-door or 4 door version. It will fit on the 4-door and it will not fit on the 2-door version.

The pads will help the kayaks from possible slipping a little and thats if you don't really tighten it down.

I wouldn't go buy pads I would just use some old towels or something and if you feel as if the towels make a huge difference than look at purchasing pads in the future. No sense in spending money on something that "might" not be needed.

Yes, works with just about every style of kayaks including river, whitewater and recreational kayaks.

Mounts directly to virtually all factory roof rack crossbars.

Haha Phil, you buttnugget! Made me really work for that one!! Yeah, so neither Yakima nor Thule give dimensions for crossbars in their vehicle fit tools. I guess they figure all Discovery's have factory crossbars and that no one would ever want to upgrade them. Well after about 20 minutes worth of google-digging so as not to lose face, I found this link:
http://landroverforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10677
If you scroll nearly to the bottom, the guy states that 50" thule bars fit nearly perfectly (see his pictures). So that being said, in Yakima I would suggest going with Railgrabs and 58" crossbars. Allowing for 4" of overhang each side to tie straps to or sawing them down a few inches for a cleaner look if necessary.
Hope this helps! Thanks Phil :-P Haha

I.e,
Check the "fit my car" link at http://www.yakima.com/ to see what options you have for your base rack system.
This option would definitely allow you to fit 2 boats on top of your vehicle. However, I must point out that this will be about the most difficult setup to load (since you must lift the boats to the center of the vehicle). And also, I would only use this setup for short carries because of how the boats rest directly on the bars. I break the rules and allow my boat to stay on top of my vehicle for days at a time, so I wouldn't dream of having it not cradled in something like a Hullraiser or Bowdown. But like I said, that's just me. Check my response to your other question for some options concerning carrying 2 boats. Good luck! Oh, and if Phil beat me to the answer while I was typing out this book, you can listen to what he has to say. He seems to know what he is talking about ;-)

You're going to have to do two things. First of all, you need a roof rack. Call Yakima and they'll tell you exactly what you need for your make and model of car (which you'll need to provide). Second, decide whether you want to haul two kayaks or three. You say both in your question, and you need to decide. And for god's sake, try to write a legible, coherent question next time. Maybe in the form of a real sentence.

You don't need saddles, just the normal straps and some bow and stern straps, although some bar pads do the trick to ease up on the kayak. I take my Jeep and two kayaks 70mph+ with this thing no problem.

You will need the Mighty Mount 25H for it to be compatible. Look at the rack configure link at the top of the page.