BRIGHTLINES Roof Rack Crossbar Cross Bar Replacement for Honda CRV 2012-2016

I have the toughest time deciding between oem and non-oem for these things. In this case it was nearly half the cost and with a lot of good reviews. Overall i'm OK with it, at some point i would like to see the oem version to compare.My car: 2013 EX-LBuild qualityThe bars feel plenty strong, they are aluminum. The end caps are plastic, fairly thick, but after installation they do have a little bit of play if you push/pull the bar around to test it. There's a screw to open the bottom panel to access the width adjustment screws, and on one bar on one side the panel screw stripped the plastic with nearly no effort. It stays in, but it's not solid.GapsThere are rubber(?) spacers/protectors which sit between the car and the plastic end caps which make a seal, and protect the car's finish from being scratched by the caps, which is good overall, however on mine it leaves small gaps around the bottom, meaning the ports where the screw holes are on the car, aren't fully covered by this system. I've tried adjusting it, but it stays the same in every case. Is it a big deal? probably not, my only concern is moisure getting in there and rusting either the bolts or the threads. Even if both are claimed to be stainless steel, you never know exactly the quality of that steel, it could rust. Learn something interesting, google: "stainless steel rust". See the photo with the red circle, it's a bit hard to tell but the rubber isn't covering that area properly.Installation notes/tipsYou likely need to adjust the width, which you do by opening the bottom panels of the end caps. I suggest dry fitting the bars(putting them in place without the screws) several times until you have gotten the width to where you need to put a little bit of force to pop the bar into place, i do mean "little". The reason is that if you go do narrow/loose, when you tighten the bolts, they will be pulling the bar to each side, and it'll magically seem like the bar shrunk (big gap on one side)Two of the screws wouldn't go in properly, and upon inspection it appeared my car's threads were dirty, luckily i had a steel wire cleaner rod of the right thickness to clean it out, and all was well (see photo)A nice touch is that they put stickers noting exactly which is front/back/right/left. Be sure to pay attention to those!OverallI'm fairly pleased despite the little details i noted above, it looks good and adds tons more mounting options.

I just received and installed the crossbars today so it's a little early to rate how they function. This review is more for assembly and packaging and overall appearance. I ordered the crossbars on a Saturday and received notice that they were being shipped on Monday. They arrived on Thursday so it is what I expected. When I opened the package I found that the bars were securely wrapped with a plastic material and the ends had a foam covering to protect them. Howver, there was no protection inside the box. They basically just kind of rattled together inside the box. Since the individual bars were wraped there didn't seem to be any damage. There was a small plastic package containing the mounting screws. The odd part about that is that there were 7 screws inside the plastic bag and one screw was floating loosely inside the box. The package with the 7 screws was sealed so I don't know how the one screw was just loosely in the box. As usual, the instructions were kind of vague. They did mention that the longer bar goes in front and the shorter bar is the rear. However it did not mention that the mounting screw locations were different for the left and right hand sides. To be fair, it does state this in the Amazon listing but not in the mounting instructions that came in the box. You have to measure the distance between the screw holes to determine which is the left side and which is the right, and also measure the length of the bars to determine which is the front and which is the back. It would have saved some trouble if the factory would have marked the bars with a little sticky which state "front left" and "rear left". That would have solved some installation questions and simplified installation. The overall installation was pretty straightforward once you determined front and rear and left and right. Just line up the holes and screw in the eight mounting screws with a Phillips head screwdriver.My overall impression of the cross bars is very good. They appear to be well made and fit the CRV perfectly. They look like a perfect replacement for the OEM bars and you save quite a bit over OEM. At this point I recommend them but will know better once I start using them.

Shipping was great. The product arrived in a few days, and I took advantage of the special Black Friday pricing, so it was a good deal. However, like other reviewers here, I want to call attention to an important step in the installation process that is NOT mentioned in the written instructions. It would be very easy to fix this by including a small leaflet or addendum with the instructions.I have a 2014 Honda CR-V. When I went to install the crossbars, I noticed that both the front and back crossbar don't QUITE reach all the way to the luggage roof rails. There's a small gap of about 3/8 inch, making them not quite wide enough. If you use a torque wrench to screw in the crossbars in, they will flex to fit, but you run the risk of putting undue strain on the luggage rails and possibly warping them, causing damage to your car. All you need to do to fix this problem is unscrew the plastic cover on the right-side mounting tower for each crossbar (Note: the right side, not the left). Underneath that plastic cover you will find two screws that will let you adjust the width of the crossbars. It's very easy to do, and once you've adjusted the width, the crossbars will fit snugly between the roof rails with no gap and no need to make them flex into place by force. But this very easy step appears NOWHERE in the printed instructions! I only found out about it by reading some of the helpful reviews posted here. As I said, it would be easy for the seller to include a small slip of paper with an addendum to the instructions, explaining that you can adjust the width of the crossbars by unscrewing the right-side mounting tower plastic cover and adjusting the two screws underneath. Because of that omission, I'm giving this 4 stars instead of 5. Otherwise, it looks and works great, and the price is right.

5 star, looks and works well