Front crossbars

I have a ladder rack I modified to fit around the shell on my short bed quad cab Tacoma 2013. This set-up works great for me except for one issue - wind buffeting/noise at speed! I have solved this by mounting a Yakima wind deflector to the front bar which extends down and sits on pads on the roof, just above the windshield rubber. This too also works great except(!) here in cold Alaska, any moisture/snow or ice created on the pads causes a constant banging in the winter time. My solution to this (not yet done) is to shorten the rack a little and mount a crossbar to the front of the truck and mount the deflector to this so it is independent of the rack and therefore will not move with the rack. Of course, Thule and Yakima make the towers but I am not a fan of the mounting method ie. the clamps that wrap around the roof line - to me they look clumsy and kinda ugly. So...... I understand there may be some pre-threaded holes beneath the rubber strip that runs the length of the roof on both sides. Does anyone know if a) this is true and b) some manufacture makes a bracket that could be attached at this point to get rid of those clamp style towers?

Apologies for the long winded post! Cheers.