Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Roof rack gets updated

My first post on making a roof rack is here;
 http://poppageno.blogspot.com/2014/04/land-rover-109-roof-rack.html

Then I followed it up with a rack designed around my Off Road lites;
http://poppageno.blogspot.com/2014/10/off-road-lites.html

Granted there is not much info on the front part of the rack. Basically I just cut and welded some Super strut into a square that held my Hella 2000's.



After I figured out how to sleep inside I sold my roof top tent. Now my roof rack didn't quite fit what I wanted it to do. Hold things, maybe even some sort of sunshield.

Well I went to Home Depot and bought 3 more pieces of Super-Strut. Figuring on making 2 longitudinal sides and 1 center one. I got eager and coated them with truck bed liner first. Wrong!
First I should have figured out where to put them. As they were drying I did this. I looked down the sides and figured I could just use the existing inboard bolts on the towers. Simples!






It was friggin hot outside to work but I started unbolting the right side inboard bolts, I got halfway done and had second thoughts about this being the best way. My main reasoning was that I wanted the rack to be flexible, that is I could reshape it if I needed to. Unbolting and moving the bars where ever they worked the best. This meant leaving the towers alone. So I put all the tower bolts back and moved the bar over to the first available slot. That is when I realized that I had not cut them to length........


I had already decided that I wanted a 1 hole overhang on the front and I would bring the back end almost even with the rear of the roof. This will be if I need/want to attach any tarps or for rigging. The 2 outboard ones were cut and then re-coated with bed liner. and now ready to install.

Starting with the ends for support I loosely bolted the outboard ones up.


And that is when the real work began......the bolt holes on the welded up section did not line up with the new pieces :^0 There went 2 hours...


The next morning I began the great labor of the day. I used a jigsaw to cut out the side pieces on the welded section. Next I removed the back 2 crossbars and ground off the old weld and re-bedlinered(NEW WORD!) the bare metal. Trust me it wasn't easy, climbing up and down on the roof, cutting and grinding up there and then realizing it would be tons easier if I took it off the roof. Unbolting the gutter clamps. figuring out how to clamp the darn thing so I could grind on it. Re-spraying. then putting them back on the roof.




Since the longitudinal side bars were there I had to figure out where to put the other cross bars. I tried measuring and setting it up evenly but the gutter mounts for the sand ladders are in the way so I got it as even as I could. There is another issue with the center long bar. The front tower is centered on the roof and the cross bar does NOT have a center hole.



This means the center long bar is crooked. In order for it to line up with the closest holes.


But it was coming together! The final thing was re-mounting the Hi-lift jack. I knew from taking measurements that it would not go back on the same holes. 



Sure enough after making the swap, I offered up the jack and Viola!



Put away tools and take the money shots after 4 hours of sweaty work and a trip to the hardware store for nuts and bolts 3/8"-24x3/4".



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