Oops- I think I made a roof rack

Fortunately I’m getting it lasered for free in 3/16” aluminum. And free material. At my job. I’m stoked! Thanks again.

 

How are the bend points determined?

 

Nice job dude, this looks great! If you have any CAD skills whatsoever its pretty nice how simple these things are to make. While I have a waterjet at work, I went the even easier (lazier) route and went with a 100% stock extrusion rack. Basically ordered my BOM from tnutz (under $200), and bolted it all together a week later. I slightly modified some 8020 framing brackets for awning mounts.



With gear case bolted on. This has the majority of the gear we take with us for trips. Easy on/off the truck in about two minutes.


Here's the 8020 framing brackets I had laying around that I modified to work as awning mounts.

 

THIS

 

Double this!

 

I feel like we'll never know.

 

Another way to do this is have the rack cut out and make a copy of it onto cardboard or similar type material. Bend it to your hearts desire to find the perfect solution for you standoffs. Another option is to cut off the legs and use angle iron of the same material and either weld it or bolt it on.

 

That's definitely an option. But OP went 95% of the way to giving us a DIY p****u rack. Just give up the other 5% for us.

 

If you model it in Solidworks and use "sheet metal" their calcs are usually pretty spot on also.

 

You can export it in PDF by creating a viewport in paper space and then scaling the components properly to whatever workable scale size from print settings you need and then export as PDF.

DWG is still easier though and is the preferable file format in order to provide a more accurate dimensioning plan!

 

Sure. I even own solid works. But where do the bends go?!

 

Anyone making this, I have an opinion to share. I have a Victory cab rack which is 3/16 aluminum side rails, and i made my own camper shell rack using 1/4” aluminum sides. If i had a choice, i would have had my cab rack made with 1/4”. Its much more solid feeling. I may in the future pull my cab rack off and use it as a stencil to make 1/4” side rails. I’m sure someone here could give a weight difference but to me i dont think its enough for me to not do it. That said i haven’t had a problem with the Victory.. i have wheeled with my 100+lb RTT on it. But I like the feel of the 1/4” side rail rack better. Just gives me more confidence. Take that for what its worth, just sharing my thoughts.

 

Depends on the width of your mounting points, and how wide you want your rack to be. You could make life easy and even slot the mounting holes if this is challenging for you to figure out.

 

Challenging? not really. The effort wouldnt really be worth it for a primcu, tbh.

 

Right on, just trying to help out based on the question you asked. I was also too lazy to model side plates, so I just made mine out of 100% off the shelf shit. Does what I need it to do so I'm happy.

 

So I had these files cut out, with a little extra TRD design element, then sent to my powdercoater, and made my own paracord handles.

Can’t wait to install when the weather gets better! Thanks again for the laser files.

One note: maybe my truck is an exception, but the front mounting foot slots are about a 1/4” too narrow so I had to dremel them out. Either the files are off a bit, my truck is oddly longer or the files were accidentally scaled before cutting.

Will update when I get in installed.

 

Also ignore the partially silver hardware. Was short on black hardware, need to get more.

Although it may be better to just replace all with stainless.

 

@JRYTacoma I’m seriously considering building this craft project. I was wondering if you could share your DXF files of what you used, I like the TRD accent and for some reason the OPs file omits the top profile of the side rails.
Also, I was curious as to what final outside dimension you bent the mounting flanges to.
My craft guide book here shows a bend allowance of .153” (.306” bend deduction) would need to be deducted from the area for a bend in 3/16” aluminum 5052.

thanks for any help you might be able to provide!
Nice work, excited to see what it looks like mounted!

Edit: also, did you make the wind deflector from 3/16” as well or do you think 1/8” would be enough. And I notice the 2 ears on the deflector file are missing from yours, I’m assuming you didn’t need them, as I couldn’t tell what they were for.

 

The file I made can be found below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FlBZkz-sVXmWbl5uwMOJbmik_AM5vPIN/view?usp=sharing

For the bend, I drew a line 2-3/4" from the bottom of the mounting flanges, placed it into a vice at that mark, and starting hammering down with a rubber mallet. I had originally tried bending with heat and some leverage but I just didn't have the right setup for it, so I let the metal choose it's own radius and just hammered.

As mentioned previously, I think the OP's files are a little short on the front end, or at least I was having issues, so I had to dremel out the front mounting slots below as per the pink part of the illustration. I will update with the accuracy of my bend radius' and the mounting slots when I mount later next week - just waiting on my spacers and roof hardware to arrive.

I made the fairing out of 3/16" for simplicity sake, but I think it would work best in 1/8". Note: the mounting hardware for the fairing should be 1/2" length, 3/4" bottoms out on the T-Slot. The gap between the 'ears' of the fairing are to accommodate a light bar as per the factory Prinsu options. I modified the files to be filled in, since I won't be mounting a light bar.

Total weight when assembled came to 35lbs, I definitely thought it was going to weight more.

EDIT: You'll notice I also rounded the fairing bottom angles, as I never liked the Prinsu sharp edged corners. This may or may not be to your liking.

 

I like it! Seems like we’re on the same page with the slight modifications. I just looked at the page for P****u and confirmed the light bar slot in the front deflector. I too, will be deleting this. And I did notice that the deflector is made from 1/8”, which I think I will do to shave weight down.

Question: did the far driver & passenger set of fairing mounting holes line up with the slots in the extrusion? I noticed they’re about 3/16” lower than the rest of the holes in the file.

did you purchase your extrusion from the OP’s source, or did you have that on hand as well?
Thank you for your input and sharing your revised file. I’m looking forward to seeing your install later this week!