That is correct and it is a ridiculous idea for them to cut it out. Looks like $hit the way Honda decided to do this. The rails should come with a seamless replacement piece. See the attached picture.

What did they charge you for the rails / crossbars / installation?

 

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Wow, thanks for the info. It's ridicules, looks pretty crappy.



QUOTE=toolazy4alogin;870930]That is correct and it is a ridiculous idea for them to cut it out. Looks like $hit the way Honda decided to do this. The rails should come with a seamless replacement piece. See the attached picture.

What did they charge you for the rails / crossbars / installation?[/QUOTE]

 

That's scary. What if you already have the rails and just need the cross-members?

 

That's scary. What if you already have the rails and just need the cross-members?

recd our cross bars in the mail today... Our Pilot Elite isn't even built yet, lol.. Supposed to be delivered Sept 10.

I'm hoping that the Elite's coming with rails will alleviate this? Probably wishful thinking.

 

My Elite have rails, unfortunately it also has the crappy trim. It hasn't come off yet but it's not very professional looking.

 

My touring has rails as standard and it also looks like this. Mind you, yours is probably the best looking one I've seen lol

 

No words.. I may have to glue that little piece down. Nothing I can claim regarding this.. That joining cutting the piece should had landed under the rails. Unless there's a valid reason why the cut is there, it doesn't look OEM to me.

 

This has been discussed before, and the piecemeal fitting of roof groove molding seems to be a "standard feature" of all 2016 Pilots. It's not just a side-effect of roof rail installation.

My completely unproven hypothesis is that the molding isn't flexible enough to conform to the bend in the front of the roof, so Honda decided to piece it together to keep it from popping up at the top of the windshield. So much for sweating the details...

 

Hopefully, they come with a solution when Mist of us start loosing that piece.

 

Wish Honda kept the rubber strip. These clip on are a pain in the a$$. I'm on my 3rd set of rail covers. I feel bad for people who live in big cities where you don't have much choice but to use a car wash. I watch my last set flew right off within seconds when the pilot was done with the wash and entering the drying section.

For the front peice you can easily pop it off and bend it to make it fit better.

 

That's exactly what i was afraid off the car wash.. .

 

Mine will likely blow off on my drive home from the delearship... I'm sure

Dealership est date of 9/10 was off. More likely to arrive on the 20th (they tell me), even though that's a sunday..

 

I have the same freaking defect. So annoying!

 

Nothing a bead of silicone for fix for now

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

My husband and I took our 2016 Pilot through a car wash last weekend and BOTH of them flew off during the course of the touchless wash. I am assuming (after reading that this is an issue) that it was during the drying cycle, but one of them actually hit the car and scraped/scratched it by the gas tank. Please be careful when using the car washes. I didn't know about the issue before yesterday, and we initially called the car wash and blamed them. We are currently waiting to see how this gets resolved from our dealer, but I would be interested to hear from anyone else that has had this issue and how it was resolved for them as well.

 

Defective rail cap

We've owned our 2016 Pilot 6 weeks. The driver's side rail cap has come off twice. Both times while in the touchless car wash. The dealer put the same pieces back on, the first time they came off. It just came off again this evening. This time it put a 4 inch scratch long scratch in the roof!

 

I think I'm going to hold off on getting mine installed when our Pilot arrives until this issue is addressed by Honda. Sound reasonable?

 

"I think I'm going to hold off on getting mine installed when our Pilot arrives until this issue is addressed by Honda. Sound reasonable?"

If you mean hold off on getting the accessory roof rails installed, it won't matter.

The title of this thread is misleading.

It's not the accessory roof rails that are flying off in the car wash, it's a piece of molding strip that covers the grooves in the roof. The molding strip comes pre-installed from the factory. The problem is it comes in two pieces: a short piece just behind the windshield and a much longer piece all the way to the rear hatch. Part of the long piece gets cut away to accommodate the accessory roof rails, when those are installed, but the short piece remains either way. It's the short piece that tends to get blown loose.

BTW, in case this isn't confusing enough already, the "accessory roof rails" come standard on US Touring and Elite trims. But there is still the same stupid little short piece of molding just itching to take flight.

 

In our case it is the short piece and the long piece that have come off, both times.

 

Taken my car through 3 touchless car washes and nothing yet.

You are right, no matter which version of the car you own, there is that stupid looking short roof rail cover in the front.

Not sure why Honda just didn't make only two sets.

1. Cover the roof completely without the roof rail.
2. Cover the roof up until the roof rails.

So if you install the roof rails, it should come with the moulding for the shorten track.

 

Maybe a dab of hot glue on the moulding would keep them from flying off.

 

Just saw my friends 2016 MDX and they have a better solution. One piece and molded....why can't honda do the same?

 

Has anyone installed the roof rails themselves? and if so, tried to leave the rubber piece as one piece vs. cutting and splicing it in. Curious as why you can't just do that, even with the slightly curve.

 

Rear Trim

Make sure that when you do have the install done on a non Touring / Elite that they properly affix the rear trim too. After the first install, the rear hatch caught the trim cap and bent / creased the plastic. The dealership replaced just the cap, but it has done it again. The have since ordered an entire new roof rail system and will be doing a full re-install.

Lucky for me the Sales Manager lives in my development and he saw exactly what happened.

Odie

 

Make sure that when you do have the install done on a non Touring / Elite that they properly affix the rear trim too. After the first install, the rear hatch caught the trim cap and bent / creased the plastic. The dealership replaced just the cap, but it has done it again. The have since ordered an entire new roof rail system and will be doing a full re-install.

Lucky for me the Sales Manager lives in my development and he saw exactly what happened.

Odie

This EXACT same thing just happened to us. My wife was showing off the car, and opens the rear hatch, and it catches the rear trim, and it pushed it into and under the rail. It was cracked, and fell off. There's tons of clearance on the passenger side, but the drivers side catches? Weird. I'll be taking it into the dealership tomorrow...

 

The only thing holding the front molding to the car (after installation) is a stud. It actually seems to be a clip thats requires pressure from behind to hold it in place. So if it can slide backwards against the rail, it will most likely pop off.

I can see a lot of folks installing this incorrectly... cutting the piece too long and there could be a bow in the plastic to catch air. Cutting too short, and it could slide back and pop off the "stud". The difference between 7.87in and the more common 7.75in is about 4.15mm. Honda should just provide the shortened front piece like they provide the back piece.

I'd definitely put a bead of silicone or hot glue along the edge of the molding... both are easily removed if necessary.

 

I can see a lot of folks installing this incorrectly... cutting the piece too long and there could be a bow in the plastic to catch air. Cutting too short, and it could slide back and pop off the "stud". The difference between 7.87in and the more common 7.75in is about 4.15mm. Honda should just provide the shortened front piece like they provide the back piece.

I'm interested in adding roof rails in the next month or so, but the one part of the instructions that I'm a bit confused on is this ....

Looking at the pdf that is referenced where it suggests cutting at 7.87 (~200 mm), is the 200mm start point at the recessed line about 2.5 inches in or at the very beginning part of the strip?

It looks like the pdf points at the recessed line then go up 7 inches... looking at the picture on the first post it doesn't look like it that far back and when the silver roof rail connects.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

I added the Rails last weekend, easy install. You measure 200mm from the front edge of the long molding or from the line where the small cover molding connects to the long molding. I added a few more mms to the cut to be safe (so mine is probably around 205mm long). Worked out perfectly because the space underneath the Rails and gasket still had enough room to accommodate the extra long cut. I think the added length will help with it being more secure from coming off, since it's locked down by the force of the rails on top of it. Also, the instructions said to remove 2 clips from each side (Step #4) but there is really 4 on each side, 2 white and 2 yellow.

 

Did you ever get a fix for this? I just spent $700 for all the parts necessary to install these roof rails correctly and am having the same problem. The rubber gasket from the spoiler is catching the hinge cap and pulling it up. I am going to bring it to the dealer but am worried as to what they will say since they did not install. Even though you can't really mess it up the pieces fit how they fit.

 

I have a 2018 elite and I think the seam under the roof rail is leaking it drips all the way to the front of my above console drips on to my radio and drips into my CD player DVD player so it’s going back to the dealer for third time idiot could even find the leak the first time said it was just the moonroof when I know that was bull****

 

New Pilot 2016 owner here, hoping to avoid the molding/rail issues and install my own rails/bars. Lots of good information here. I wonder if they'd done anything to newer versions to solve this issue?