Rack It!

The Civic needed a rack, and I didn't like the Yakima/Thule ones out there. They look too "added-on" to me. The Civic Si has nice rain gutters. So I started looking around at other cars with OEM racks and similarly-shaped rain gutters. The Acura MDX suv has a very similar shape, and it's made by Honda, too. I bought a set on eBay and cut them down to the width of the Civic's roof. I drilled holes of a large enough diameter to put blind nuts called "Plusnuts" into the roof. I primed the bare metal exposed by the drilling with POR-15 so that it wouldn't rust. Then I gooped tons of silicone sealant in the holes. The racks required some pretty serious angle grinding to get them to fit down in the gutters, but they look totally stock now.