Why plano cases on roof?

FTFY

 

Also I love Plano products. Plus they're manufactured in my home town!!!!

 

I could, but it'd be easier to just copy/paste...

 

In a market full of minivans, and SUV's the car/truck hybrid concept seems less useful. Especially since it's no longer legal to mount "tail gunner" seats in the back like the old Subaru Brat (and I'm sure some people did the same with El Caminos and Rancheros, but I can't remember seeing many as a kid.

 

when you put it like that… lol

idk. I cleared the entry. Not the exit. My fault for not measuring the height to know for sure.
And probably have to realize and accept it’s not stock any more.

I don’t think anything is messed up. It was very slow and light. At least it’s a cheap box and not a Roam.
I even mounted them forward so the boxes can slide back if there’s an issue such as movement off road, with some inches back available in the rack slots. So far nothing has ever moved.

Yes bed is platform and drawers.

Installed a rack over Softopper to be specific
And gonna figure out how to put things on that

preferably without destroying the rack drilling new holes instead of using the existing holes somehow



you’ve got a point about it interfering with flat roof lumber hauling

they used to make a MaxTrax holder that goes on the rack
And axe held on the outside of the holder
“2 in 1”

rack is pre drilled to hold rotopax hangers and maxtrax pins
So I’ll probably just have to find or make brackets that attach to that to hold different things

they also cut MOLLE grid into one for a customer on a Jeep
That could be another way

cut MOLLE into the doors. Or bolt a MOLLE panel onto the existing holes.

maybe one row of rifle case to interfere with roof less.
All I know is the shovel high on the cab rack is ugly.
Gonna see what I can figure out.

roof boxes came from lessons learned camping running out of room in the bed. Forget exactly what I had in the drawers. Probably half clothes half survival.

 

Probably because in the era before seatbelts we’re mandatory it was a profoundly bad idea to ride in the back of an open vehicle and likely the reason jump seats went by the wayside. Still, a roofless bed comes in handy for things that are better transported upright.

 

Before seatbelts were mandatory? When Subaru was making the Brat, shoulder belts in the front and (I'm pretty sure) lap belts were mandatory to be included in cars. It wasn't yet mandatory for people to use them, but they had to be in the cars. I think the rear seats in the Brat even had a 3 or 4 point belt/harness, which made them a hell of a lot safer than riding in a regular pickup bed, which people did somewhat regularly (despite it being a bad idea in most situations). Back then, not all vehicles had enough strength in the A/B/Z pillars to remain intact through a rollover and maybe a handful of models had front airbags (side curtains hadn't even been imagined yet), so it wasn't all that much safer to be inside the cab of a pickup than in the bed in a lot of kinds of accidents (and before quad-cabs, the back was often "jump seats" where the passenger's spine was almost guaranteed to take a direct hit if the vehicle got T-boned).

In general though it was a different era. We all grew up being told that the world might end on any given day if a handful of morons in D.C. or Moscow decided it was time to "push the button", so people were generally less concerned with trying to figure out how many layers of bubble-wrap might somehow enable them to live forever

I will say this for the "before times" of the 20th, when cars didn't have 1500 lb and $18k worth of additional "safety" features built in, and even manual transmissions were relatively common. People not thinking that their vehicle would protect them from any potential mishap (or even correct their driving if they're a total fuckup) led to a lot more drivers paying attention to what they were doing and what was happening on the road around themselves (except for one out of every 30-45 minutes when they'd be lighting a cigarette...)

 

I was referring to El Caminos and Rancheros which were around long before the Brat and had at most lap belts which weren’t even mandatory. Ejections weren’t uncommon even when fully enclosed, open jump seats at or behind the rear axle we’re asking for trouble. I couldn’t say the actual reasoning but it wouldn’t surprise me if the DOT finally just said screw it and banned the idea altogether even though Brat was in compliance. Might be too many passengers just playing roulette with Darwin. I’ve been driving since the mid 70’s and people had different ways of driving stupid back then, now there are just more of them and new methods.

 

Riding to the beach in a beanbag chair in the back of an El Camino was livin' large.....

 

Between biased ply radial tires and four-wheel drum brakes, driving most cars from that era over 70 or so mph wasn't exactly a smart move in all but ideal conditions, but nobody ever felt completely safe while doing it the way they do with answering emails and eating a plate of pasta while driving 40-50 mph in heavy L.A. traffic these days.

The one time I did ride in the bed of an El Camino as a teenager, it wasn't one with seats, but the trip was also only about 4 blocks through residential streets were more than sparse traffic was very rare on a summer day in Montana, and the reason I got in was really a worse idea than the ride itself in that case. I'm pretty sure that in 50 years on the planet, and owning a pickup for almost half of those, I've ridden in or had passengers (the one time I drove with people in the bed of my truck would have been a horrible idea if we'd been going more than 3-4 blocks inside of a gated condo development and traveling under 20mph) in the bed of my vehicle more times than I've hauled anything that wouldn't have fit inside of a minivan or full-sized SUV.

 

Introducing
Magnetic Maxtrax mounts from the van world

strong enough to hang a wheel/tire from it
Nobody knows its magnetic
*might* stick to Tacoma hood
To further reduce visibility



Kind of like the 5th gen 4runner one but without the ugly $500 rack from Venezuela

 

needs moar lights

 

and a pull up bar

 

Alex Honnold would approve

 

oh hell, now we are talking. I've got a new project to make! and I can swap them between vehicles super quick. couple cheap Amazon magnets for lights, some metal strap some longer bolts or pins and we are done! off to buy amazon stuff!