Round or Square

[Chops]

Hi people's,,
I'm about to build myself a full length roofrack for the Disco. :D
My question is,, whats the best material to use in order to keep wind noise down? Round or Square tubing?
Square is easier to work with, but harder to bend up to shape,,
The type used may also help with ecconomy too, although I'm not really concerned about that.
So there's a few threads on here, but no one has really stated if certain types are noisier over others etc. I understand all the wind resistance issues that come with a roofrack, but theres not alot you can do about it,,, I want a tent up there,,

Your thoughts and ideas please,,, :)
Chops

[adonuff]

Hi I think I would go for the square and add a wind deflector to try and stop the noise, mainly for the ease of construction.

Andrew

[VladTepes]

Not to mention that its much easier to screw things to square section than round tube if you need to.

[Hay Ewe]

round tube is more aerodynamic and should there fore be quieter, but I would go for square tubing

square tubing will probably be heavier for the same size, because there is more of it (the perimiter measurements) so your useful load up top would be reduced (if you followed the book etc)

Hay Ewe

[Tombie]

I'd use round.... Smoother look, quieter...

[richard4u2]

i made one out of square tube and it made a racket so i welded some angle iron to the front bar and that took the wind noise away
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front
been rover drivers i know you will work that out :D

[JDNSW]

Of itself, the shape of the tubing will make little difference to the noise, the design of the rack will make a lot of difference, but in what way is definitely not predictable by any means available to the ordinary bloke (or even to commercial manufacturers for that matter). So I would use whichever is best for other reasons.

If the result turns out to be noisy, this can probably be fixed by turning the front bar into a vortex generator. A Citroen wagon I used to own had a roof rack as standard - and the front (round) bar had a heavily spiral ribbed plastic tube threaded over it. When this disintegrated in the Australian sunshine, I found out what it was for! Silence (relative) was restored by spiralling 6mm rope round the bar and taping it in place.

John