I have been contemplating cupboards or shelves or just bolting the pelican case to the roofside to removing the windows and installing one of those cupboard insert thingies. By myself as I am now and likely to be the rest of my life I don't need much storage for clothes and all my camping cooking gear fits nicely in a Pelican 1650 case.
Let's face it all that space along the roof sides is wasted behind the driver. I was thinking of putting in some 1.5" wire mesh with a 2 fold purpose, 1 to stop theft and 2 to be able to attach things to on the inside. You know just cutting and bolting it to the inside drip rail to the tub capping like an inside cage.
I have also been thinking of how to have something to drink while driving and figured that something like a tank or water bladder mounted behind the peoples head along the roof side with a drinking tube extending over the door would allow for sippin while on those long hwy miles or fourwheeling.
Mulling it over for quite a while I finally came up with these pack rack thingies. Basically a cleat mounted to the inside drip rail for the shoulder straps to hang on and the bottom I just put in a simple wire ring anchor point.
Measuring things out I figured I wanted to start with a 12" long cleat and I found some 7/8" electrical conduit I had kicking around. I wanted something round and largeish as to not damage the pack straps. I marked 6" to get the center and made 2 more marks 1.5" out on either side of that. Then I drilled out 1 side of the tube to fit a 1/2" OD steel tube.
I had to kinda guess at how long to make the 1/2" tube to make the cleat stand off enough from the drip rail. I used 1.5" for my length. It is tight on my pack(1-3/4" would have been better) but good on my Camelback. These tubes I welded into the cleat making sure they were lined up flat and straight with each other.
Once the one side was welded in I then drilled out the other side to 3/8" the size of the ID of the tube. This would give me some bite on the tube and keep the bolt from cutting through it. (I hope!). Inside the 109 I used the 3/8" drill to mark where to drill the holes. I only marked 1 hole and drilled it out to 5/16" the size of the bolts I was going to use, wanting to keep as much of the drip rail as possible. Step drilling out the hole and then installing a bolt allowed me to accurately line up the other hole with the 3/8" bit thru the tube marking the drip rail. This was done for both pack racks. And all bolts were installed, I didn't measure them just grabbed some I had I think they are around 2" x 5/16".
A view from above;
So here is a pic of the packs hanging from the racks before I figured out how to restrain the bottom.
Without the packs;
I needed a day or so to figure out how to restrain the bottoms. I tried bungie but it wasn't tight enough and kinda awkward to do. It also showed me that the straps would have to be tight to keep the packs from slumping down from the rack.
I was going to make some kind of restraining thing for each strap, then I hit upon the idea that I could do 1 restrainer for both straps. So this is what I did;
Having some left over wire ring anchor points I mounted them under the centerline of the racks and marked the holes. Then using the do 1 hole at a time on each bracket method I drilled and bolted one side and then I could accurately drill thru the opposite hole and line up the bracket. Installed with 1/4-28 x 3/4" bolts.
Through these I put those links with the threads, I'm drawing a blank on what they are called. Then I could run both the straps thru and tighten them down. I will probably try spring loaded carbineers at some point.
Next up was to make some sort of clips that I could use to hold the drinking tube. Using some stainless strapping tape I fashioned a couple of clips and we'll see how they work out.
In use;
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