Custom Roof Rack Build (with pictures)

I set out a few months ago to design a roof rack for my tacoma that better suits my needs. I had a specific idea/picture in my head of how I wanted it to look, and what I wanted it to do.

The main thing I wanted was for my roof rack to be the 'hub' for all my lights. I wanted to have lights on the sides, back, and front (and I wanted all areas on separate switches. So that when I go camping I could turn on certain sections of the roof rack lighting depending on where I was set up around my truck.

I have seen many people who hook 3 or 4" pod lights onto the T-slot of their Front Runner or Prinsu racks, but I never cared much for the look of it, and I use my truck as a DD, so having less stuff sticking off the roof to create less wind noise was a definite consideration. So I asked some friends on their opinions, and decided to create a roof rack frame with built in cut-outs for a very specific 7" lightbar that you can find on Amazon/Ebay for cheap. I bought six of these lights (3 per side), and mapped out the dimensions into AutoCAD onto the roof rack frame. I designed the frame to hug the roof's contours a bit better than other roof racks for tacomas, but also wanted to keep the "bolt together" simplicity of the rack, so I seperated the rack's frame into 4 different sections (Front Wind Guard, Left Rail, Right Rail, and Rear Guard).

I sent my design off to the laser cutter and had my first prototype finally made.



I then lined up the newly purchased mini lightbars and they fit perfectly!


Only one thing I didnt consider. The light will be shooting straight out from the roof, meaning the ground around me will not be lit up, only the trees to the sides of my truck. Flush mount light bars do not have the same flexibility to move around as pod lights. So I opened a 3D modelling program known as Blender and designed an angled spacer for the lights. The spacer is designed to sit between the light and the roof rack, and angles the light bar down around 15* (which is perfect and lights up the ground/rocks beautifully). I made six of these spacers out of ABS plastic on my 3D printer at home with the model I made.



After that, I sent my frame rails off to be powder coated and got them back pretty recently. I bolted the rack up and think it looks fantastic.





I need to find a warm weekend soon here to run the wires to the roof and attach the flush mount light bars. I added an opening on the front wind guard of the rack as well to mount a larger 42" light bar. I havent picked out the light bar I want yet, so that is still to come.

 

So I got all my lighting hooked up! What a difference. I now have light from all angles

 

DAMN! That rack is fire. Flows nicely with the contour of the truck. Nice job!

 

Thanks man! yeah I modified the back a bit to flow with the lines of the truck more. And the 'wind' guard at the back doubles as a plate to hide all my wiring for my lights haha.

 

very nice build, I love how the side plates follow the roof line.

Sent you a PM about it

 

Awesome result man!

 

looks awesome. interested in sharing your design file?

 

Possibly in the future when the design is completely finished, it took a lot of work to get everything lined up properly. I still have a couple modifications I want to make to the design, but obviously its too late now as I've already powder-coated it and set everything up. So I may be looking at making a second one with some new modifications, possibly with different light cutouts.

 

I would pay money for that.

 

wow! nicely done! I love it when people freely share their designs, but i bet you could sell your design to a manufacturer. It looks slick. I wonder how much weight it could hold before the 90 degree bent brackets would need gusseting.

Does the top of the front light bar sit under the crossbars so you could load a canoe, kayak, ladder, etc on top? or does your cross bars accept thule or yakima stuff?

 

Yes, the top light bar sits under the cross bars. Honestly, my whole goal for this roof rack build was "As much light, as cheap as possible". The lights you see on the side were ordered on Amazon for $25 for two. And the front light bar was $70. Unfortunately, there weren't a whole lot of options for 40" lightbars under $100. If I was to choose a lightbar again, I would get a single row/skinny 40" instead of the double row I have now. A more expensive single row would sit a lot more comfortably under the cross bars to the point I wouldn't be worried about smashing it if I was loading a ladder or canoe on the roof.

The rack is actually incredibly solid, you can shake the entire truck just by rocking the rack back and forth. I was standing on top of it without it flexing/showing any signs of stress. The aluminum used in this is high grade and for what its worth, was expensive vs doing the rack out of steel.

 

I love it, it looks strong and well thought out for most of the recreational stuff that would go on a roof. I have a full yakima setup, and certainly don't need a rack like yours... but that doesn't mean I don't want one! Great diy!

Do you have access to the laser cutter at work? Can I ask how much $ you put into the project? I totally think aluminum was the way to go.

Thread hijack: On another note, you said you used Blender to design the side light adapters. I thought that was more for modeling animations... I might look into using it with my 8th graders (i'm a stem teacher). Tinkercad is a bit too simple for some of my students. solidworks is being used at our high school, but it would never work on our chromebooks and most of my 8th graders heads would explode. I have been having a few kids mess around with onshape, but it is pretty similar to solidworks but web based and runs on chromebooks. I think it might be a bit much for most of my students.

 

One main thing im loving about this design, is the addition of the rear wind guard/wind plate. It makes the rack look nice from behind, but the best part is it hides all the wiring from the lights on the rack. You cannot see ANY wiring from the ground, just the lights themselves. Which is pretty awesome.

You can also see from my last pic, how the lights I bought on Amazon (Which are sold as flush-mount lights), sit recessed into the frame of the roof rack via the laser cut holes/cutouts. They bolt in nice and easy and the wiring neatly tucks away behind it, out of sight.

 

yup, it looks super clean. I'm guessing this was not your first rodeo with designing something like this.

Looks as nice as the prinsu stuff.

 

Tinkercad is extremely useful for starting out in 3D modelling/design. Helps shape the groundwork for simple projects.

This specifically was designed with a combination of Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop then exporting the sketches from illustrator in AutoCad to make the proper line drawings, and then finishing in CAD. I learned CAD in college a while back and had to do a bit of refreshing, but made it work.

Ive recently been working with Fusion 360 for all my 3D modelling work for 3D Printing. Its amazing software and takes a short time to learn. I used to design levels/maps for video games years ago, so the controls and general feel of the program came extremely quickly. But I feel if your students can mess with Tinkercad with no issue, Fusion 360 is only another small step.

I couldnt tell you for sure how much the whole project cost, as its been a number of different steps that all progressively added up over 2 months. Its been the Aluminum material cost, laser cutting, finishing/prep work, powdercoating, mounting/assembling hardware, T-slot crossbars, buying the LED lights and wire, and gas money driving around buying all this stuff. I think under $800 after all was said and done. Thats if you dont include the $500 3D printer I bought to make the light spacers haha.

As for the laser cutting, I went through a shop by my work that has amazing reviews and did it at a very reasonable rate.

 

I should look into Fusion 360. It seems to come up pretty often on various youtube makers' channels.

What a cool project... and you CAN'T include the printer in that budget. It's a tool that you will use in lots of other projects!

 

Definitely, ive been having a ton of fun messing around with it for other things.

I swapped the electronic 4x4 system in my Tacoma in place of a manual shifted 4x4 system for reliability and strength, and I made and painted (poor paint job though haha) these custom shifter knobs. The same thing would of been around $60 online, I made it at home with $0.75 worth of printer filament, and some red paint.

Its a fun tool and amazing how I can turn something I just designed on the computer 2 minutes ago into something I can hold and use on a daily basis

 

Nice build! I’m looking at designing something similar myself. I noticed you are from Canada. Where did you source the extrusions from?

 

most get them from
https://www.tnutz.com/product/ex-10...tted-aluminum-extrusion-for-prinsu-roof-rack/

 

Awesome design!