Custom Roof Rack Mounts

[Doc in AZ]

I'll tell you anything you want to know about the rack, but you'll have to spend a minimum of about $ 600 to get a decent Bender and tooling to get started. And I'll say it again, youare putting wayyyyyyyyy too much effort into the rack design.

And I've got to say this is my favorite quote

Thats a cool tool you have there...

[Matt]

Doc, make no mistake... you're building me a rack!

Working on some of those mounts you talked about now to get an idea if I can machine them without spending big coin on some fancy bits.

Edit: and im only putting as much effort in as I want to. Some people watch a lot of TV, others my age play hours upon hours of video games..... me? well, i like designing/fixing/solving/etc. This is my hobby.

[IamJEEP]

I'll tell you anything you want to know about the rack, but you'll have to spend a minimum of about $ 600 to get a decent Bender and tooling to get started. And I'll say it again, youare putting wayyyyyyyyy too much effort into the rack design.

And I've got to say this is my favorite quote

Why thank you sir......this won't be the first time i have been quoted...LOL

[Sal-XK]

Why thank you sir......this won't be the first time i have been quoted...LOL

Well, you have to be good at something LOL

[IamJEEP]

Well, you have to be good at something LOL

LOL, that's right!

[Matt]

Newest concept.

Would require that the rack width follow width of the OEM rails (within reason). Not sure if this is exactly what Doc was envisioning.... but when he recommended making a mount that the rack would sit on and clamp directly to, this is what I pictured.

Still needs a few tweaks......... and i'd incorporate some spherical washers to account for the angle created by the clamp (spherical washers may also be a good solution for the clamping plate beneath the roof rail)

This one just shows how the edge of the rack would have to follow the roof rail line (so the rack would taper towards the rear just like the roof)



Front view just showing the position. I'd probably make the clamping slot a bit wider to account for variations in width. For ease of assembly, i simply aligned the axis of the roof rack tube and the axis of the radius in the clamp. Obviously, they will not match up perfectly like that on the real thing.



And two projections to get an idea of what they'd look like... Still needs a few aesthetic tweaks... but this gets the point across.

[Matt]

I was talking to one of my buddies who works at a machine shop and he said it really wouldn't be too much trouble to get some CNC machine time, especially since I can do all of the design and just transfer the model file to the machine to do the work.

So..... I'm simplifying it for the time being. I'm going to make the basic style clamp mount (shown below). I'm also going to use a square u-bolt with tri-groove nuts on top to make it a bit more theft "resistant". This isn't shown in the model....





Then, once i have my roof rack on I can take my time and really make some cool mounts for it to eliminate the crossbars.

[Matt]

Materials here. Debating whether or not to downsize the U-bolt size.... But I like the 3/8-16 thread and tri-groove nut size. We'll see how the first test piece comes out...