Roof bars fititng (xc60)

[BlueDevil]

Flush rails, non-Volvo crossbars, and a roof box.

In user's manual Volvo says they recommend Volvo-made crossbars and to follow instructions that come with those. In the instructions for the bars I have they say to "place the bars approximately at these locations" where the rear bar is more or less directly where the rear door ends and the front one is approx in the center of front door.

I know it's advised to have bars at least 70cm apart, and since I have a roof box I will obviously first fit the box to the bars and then lift it all up to the roof. No brain there. But what puzzles me is the placement of the whole package in longitudinal sense of the car: more towards the front? Or more towards the back? I was thinking all the way to the back BUT with the tailgate open. If possible, of course, so as to be able to open the hatch without it hitting the roof box. Then again, this might not be possible since the box is 220cm long.

All my previous cars that used roof box have had fixed crossbars points, so there was no combining involved - you had to put the bars THERE and that's it. Now they can be moved some 20-30cm (I guess, just eyeballing it from outside) towards the front or the back.

So what should I do, what should I aim?

[BECKS7]

would be interested in the answer to this as just in the process of looking for roof bars + roof box

[DaveXC]

Hi, I've just bought a 2014 XC60 and some roof bars to go with it, and I have the same issue.

My roof box is 175cm long so I put front bar just in front of the front door opening, rear bar just past the rear opening, with 75cm gap (the gap between front and rear door openings is around 70cm) - Box will have 50cm front overhang, 75cm between the bars and 50cm rear overhang.

My roof box instructions say max 80cm gap so I'm OK with that.

In short - 50cm from the windscreen - bar - 75cm - bar - 69cm to tailgate