Help please Thule experts

[Nikolai]

Despite thinking I'm reasonably intelligent, I've been outsmarted by a roof rack. I contacted Thule but no reply yet, so assuming a fair few people in here are old hands at roof mounted bike racks, this is the issue.

Mounting to a Punto 3 door (Abarth, of course) , using the fiat-specified Thule pack, I set the foot distance to 911mm as per the manual. When I tighten the roof clamps, the load spreading plate won't sit flush to the inside of the door frame as in the photo below, is this bad? I don't want to damage the paint. The manual says they should sit flat, and YouTube/Google seems to confirm everyone else's do sit flat.

I thought I'd move the feet out to try and close that angle, still ends up the same.



Also, how tight is tight? Those stupid little Allen keys with the marks never line up to show the correct tightening torque even though it seems like the roof will fold in half. 3Nm is nothing so I'm confused.

[Mr Gearchange]

The bracket needs to go inside the door rubber.

[Nikolai]

An update for anyone who stumbles across this during a search. The brackets weren't inside the rubber, must be the way the photo makes it look. I put the brackets in a big vice and gently compressed them to bend the plate further in. Only a mm or so, but the brackets fit fine now and I don't believe this would have caused any work hardening of the metal.