My Kayak Transport Set Up.

I made a roof rack for my truck to carry my kayaks. In hindsight I totally should have just bought a Prinsu rack and adapted some crossbars onto it. I spent way too much time on it. The carriers are Thule Hullavators and the crossbars are 60" Thule Aeroblades that I narrowed to 54". I was going to use 1x2 square tube for the crossbars but decided to use the more aerodynamic aeroblades since I had them already. The main tube bodies are .120 wall 1 3/4 HREW and the feet I cut from 4" square tube. The aluminum tube caps I ordered from TMRcustoms.ca.

 

When I was mocking it up I could see using my Thule feet would make it too tall so I sunk the bars into the tubes to keep it as low profile as I could.

 

Nice. I have a prinsu on order, but there is something to be said about doing your own thing. Looks great.

 

Do you leave the hullavators on full time?

 

Very nice!

Here's mine. I can haul bikes or 'yaks on the trailer cross bars. Now if people would stop buying them from me for long enough for me to use it.

 

Thanks Dangle

Tejas no I don't leave them up there since they look funny and aren't quiet. I leave the lower bracket mounted to the crossbar (you can see them in the top pic in my 2nd post) and the upper slips off quickly by tipping up and pulling a pin.

That's a good sized trailer there koditten.

The beauty of the Hullavators is you do up all the straps at waist level. Well the bow and stern lines you just clip on and tighten one its up there but there is no standing on the door sill trying to reach over the hull to get to a strap. Makes life easy and the easier it is the more it will get used.

 

Nice!

 

Your setup is a lot more impressive than my functional, but rather unimpressive beat up old Yakimas. I have ditch mount tracks on the cab with rail tracks on the shell. This way I can put the Yakima landing pads anywhere along the cab and the bed to get a wide range of crossbar spacings. I don't have a lot of pictures of all the combinations, but we put a huge assortment of bikes and boats on the truck depending on what we are doing and where we are going.

Incidentally, no, you do not have to ask. The answer is yes, I do like whitewater...just a little bit.

 

This reminds me I need to figure out a way to haul kayaks when I have the RTT on the bed rack... Without trailering them.

 

While I like the idea of the RTT setup, I will never have one for that reason. I cannot carry enough boats!

 

Well I have few other projects to take care of first but my future thoughts for that roof rack would be to make my own Flip-pac style canopy. The boats swing off the side and then the top opens up and lays onto the roof rack. I would use hard sides though rather than fabric since I live in bear country. The only downside is the boats swung down would block the cab off. Of course I am not currently set up to weld aluminum so I'd have to fab it out of steel. I current use my flat deck trailer when I need to haul more than 2 boats.

BTW sweet folding trailer knu2xs.

 

Wow! Impressive!
Can't imagine those Thule Hullavators were cheap!
I went the Prinsu route and don't regret it. A bit tough getting the yaks up there but it works. I came up with a great way to carry the paddles as well. I'll post a few pics tomorrow.
Thumbs up on custom made!

 

Very cool solution. I love that the kayak mounts drop down to the side of the truck. I've considered getting a small kayak and carrying it on my cab's roof, but I will have a hard-shell RTT mounted in the bed, and didn't want to deal with removing the kayak to get the RTT up for the night. Being able to "drop down" the kayak to the side of the truck without actually having to completely remove it could be an excellent middle-ground.

 

Thule SportRack saddles work great for the OEM rack.

 

Few pics of our setup.
Didn't have the Kayaks loaded though.
The paddles were bugging me just tossing them in the bed so i used Quick fists on the side of the Prinsu. (had to drill a hole on either side for the rear fists) Easy to load and unload as well as remove the fists when we're not needing them.

 

I experimented with this using some 2x4. It held two kayaks nicely. I had planned to use the wood rack as a template to build a more permanent one. It actually worked really good. Never replaced it though, since I later sold the RTT and went back to a camper shell.

 

The new setup it much less impressive than OP's, but it works. I made a simple block of wood, and attached it with hose clamps. I like to transport my boats upside down to prevent uplift.