Roof rack.

Nah I was thinking for like canoes and kayaks.


Now I need a canoe to haul haha... and a bed rack. Know anyone local that does fab work?

 

I know a guy... Just been too busy for my own good.

 

Yeah I'm working on a design for a bed rack/storage for my truck. And then gonna have a custom cover made that will snap on to keep stuff dry when out camping. I'm from oregon so it's always wet here haha

 

I un-abandoned the project last night and got my new feet cut out and drilled. Hopefully can have it mounted sometime soon, depending on rain.

 

I committed fully to the project last night, drilled holes in my roof. Then naturally it started raining on me so I ran around like crazy siliconing over the holes temporarily until I can get back to it. My flip flop gasket idea didn't work out so I bought a bunch of boat plugs at menards last night.

Don't worry, this'll all make sense eventually haha

 

Here's what I did using Yakama tracks, bases and lanch pads.

 

On the roof, I just cut small plates of AL to help support the roof sheet metal and screwed the yakama pads right to the roof. Works great for the canoe and would be easy to place a basket on. I don't have any close ups of the top rack, I'll get some this weekend.

 

Damn that looks good! Makes me want a roof rack...

 

That's what I'm going for, just a helluva lot cheaper and ghetto-er haha

Mine is gonna be lower profile though and the cross bars will be removable easily from the tracks. Probably just make shit easier to steal... oh well

I'm hoping to carry snowboards and skis up there and have my bed left for other shit (like my "traction tree stumps" I have back there for weight in the winter)

 

Was never a huge fan of the bed racks like that. The idea never sounded good but I have to say looks have changed my opinion on them. It looks clean!

 

Ok, finally got it all finished up this weekend.

Materials used (you'll want to take a seat, this list is pretty comical)

-Roof rack off a wrecked Chevy Blazer
-4 size XL foam flip flops from Walmart
-1 "toilet repair kit" (also from Walmart, was basically just a set of assorted rubber washers)
-1 plastic folder
-8 rubber boat plugs
-crazy glue
-self tapping screws
-silicone

As I said earlier, the rack system consists of 2 "feet" with a rail running between them on each side. The crossbars can be slid up and down the rail to position them. My plan was to just cut the rails down and screw the feet to the roof to maintain the adjustability. Here's a picture of on of the feet:



It's about a foot long. Once you get it far back enough on the roof to where it's flat enough to mount, and take into consideration that there's 2 of these on each side, you're left with about a foot of rail space on each side. That is essentially worthless. So plan B was to somehow mount the rails straight to the roof. I got new feet cut out of the rails and used the flip flops as a gasket/spacer to bring the rails up to a usable height. They were too soft and they looked stupid so I abandoned them and got the boat plugs. The toilet washers were kinda cone-shaped, so I put silicone on them and placed them pointy-side down so they would wedge into the holes. Then the boat plugs went over them to add height and I screwed them down. Hindsight being 20/20, self tappers were not the ideal solution here. I stripped so many of them and ended up having to reposition both sets of feet because the holes got too enlarged, so 2/4 "corners" of the roof have 4 holes because one set got fubared. They're sealed off and hidden under the boat plugs but it still pisses me off. I also was gunshy tightening the other ones for fear of stripping them out, so my boat plugs aren't all as "squished" as I'd like them to be. Someday if I have the interior pulled apart (from what I found almost all the plastic stuff inside has to go to get the headliner down) I'll replace the screws with bolts. Or maybe go straight through the headliner, if I nail-polished the heads on the inside tan I don't think they'd bother me too much. Anyway, here's what I came up with:







I still need to clean up the silicone around the boat plugs but you get the idea. Didn't come out as clean as I wanted to, but not bad for 40 bucks and some spare time.

 

lol that materials list is awesome..

the metal on our roofs is pretty thin as you've found out. The other (cough, better, cough) option to the self tappers would be to install "flare rivets" into the roof and then you could screw the feet down w/o fear of stripping out the holes.. you still might be able to do this..

check out this link to a similar install --> http://www.stripersonline.com/t/790574/nissan-frontier-bare-roof-rack-installation

 

Oh that's a great idea! Where the fuck were you a week ago haha.

I thought of trying to use some kind of anchors but couldn't come up with anything that would work, rivets would be perfect.

I forgot to add, I used the plastic folder and crazy glue to make end caps for each of the feet to clean things up nicely. Also forgot black nail polish on the materials to paint the interior of each drilled hole in the top black.

I picked up a Reese roof basket last night at Walmart, dumb luck it fit perfectly and I like how it looks up there and was $99.

 

Looks great, and done pretty economically too!

I really wanna do something like this but very nervous drilling into my roof. I don't see how else i can haul my kayak though. I guess a bed rack might do the trick.

 

yea MowTaco I gotta say it looks pretty good, just needs a little fine tuning maybe, also a little worried about its weight capacity/strength

Totes - if you have a hitch receiver look up the Thule bed extender

 

I was nervous too, I think beer needs to be added to the supplies list (for those of age of course) to ease the roof drilling jitters. It wasn't too bad, just line everything up and measure 3 more times than you think you need to.

Yeah it didn't end up as sleek and factory-looking as I envisioned it but it'll work. It's pretty solid, each foot is mounted very near one of the corners of the cab so the roof doesn't deform or anything from it. The only thing I'm worried about is the way the crossbars load the screws. The crossbars make an arch shape, which transfers all the load laterally to the screws when they try to bend down under a load. I could see this over time deforming the holes to the point where the screws no longer have any thread engagement. I'm just gonna test it for awhile without anything valuable up there and see if it flies off.

 

That looks good! It's making want to start mine soon haha

 

This is what i came up with..

Started with a $20 roof rack off a 4Runner out the junkyard which consists of the tracks, upper cross bars and lower cross bars that sit on the roof itself. The rack had 5 hex screws holding it down and i havent drilled into my roof as of yet but plan to use the nut certs as mentioned above.. Here it is straight off the runner



Obviously way too long so i disassembled all the crossbars (upper and lower) from the track & cut the track down to size in order to fit the ext cab roofs since we have a hump going towards the back of the cab.. This is the front section essentially in place and i still have to cut the rear track section out for the rear bar..




I also have the sunroof option in my truck and the rack was about .5" too narrow to fit around it so i unbolted the upper and lower crossbars from their mounting feet and soaced the track just far enough for the sunroof to still open..

Thats about as far as ive gotten thus far as ive been working on some armor for a buddy but will get back to work on this soon! & i will also likely make my own feet that use the runner knobs to tighten down and my own cross bar which will be 1" tubing so its more of a straight across rack similar to a yakima and ill cut a piece of plate out for a wind screen up from that will hold a 40" lightbar.. But ill keep this thread updated as i go

 

Looks good! I like the look of it and might look into doing something similar if I don't custom hack a gen.2 rack to fit. Still looks great tho and if my idea doesn't work I might go try that!

 

Bump. Did you end up finishing this?