Custom Roof Rack Mounts

[Matt]

Ok haven't had as much time as I thought.... while my son is napping great, my 3 week old daughter has decided to give her lungs a workout this afternoon.

I didn't have time to mess around with the rendering to make it look a bit more "realistic" either. I tried a few quick presets but it made the surfaces way too reflective and even a bit harder to see what was going on.

Also did not put the lower clamping plate on or the nut. I figure this gets the point across enough... i'd make a lower clamping plate out of 1/8" thick steel and put a good nut/washer on it and probably call it good. Still debating whether I want to put a 0.1" platform on the one side of that plate so that the washer and nut sit a bit more flush. That's something I can figure out later though and will be pretty consistent regardless of which design i go with. As I started measuring and modeling I came up with some "better" designs... but "better" also means more $$ in materials and almost twice as much machining. As it sits now, I can probably make all 6 of these mounts for about $100 in materials (that includes bolts and hardware).

After I get my rack and see how the rack will mount to the crossbars, I even have the ability to cut down the groove where the load bar sits to bring it a bit closer. Although, as it sits right now, there'll be a little more than 1/2" clearance with the very top of the roof.

[Matt]

Quick note....

While driving to my parents house to take the kids swimming I was thinking about Docs suggestion to mount directly to my stanchions..... I like it. The front most mounts will have the mounting bolts only about 2-2.5" away from the edge of the rack, and with my stanchion design there really wont be much cantilever action at all. If anything the problem would be with the rear most mounts if the edge of the rack interferes with the bolt head... but the bolts might end up being just off the edge of the rack.

When we get home tonight I'm going to make a quick model of what I think would need to be welded on the rack. Basically just 6 L-brackets that are 2" wide and have some gussets for stability.

[Matt]

I'll be shooting these to Doc in an Email in a few minutes... but if he can weld 6 brackets like this onto the rack (or something similar that he thinks would do the job) then this may be the best idea for a nice clean & custom rack setup.

For the model I used rough dimensions for the front-most mounts. Here, the center of the cross rails are roughly 52" apart. So with a 48" wide rack the bolt would be about 2" from the edge.

I'm happy I modeled this... with my custom stanchions the rack will be plenty supported. The middle and rear mounts will be almost completely supported on the stanchions as well since the rails taper as you get further back.

[IamJEEP]

I like this kind of thinkng! Awesome work, Matt.......I was actually going to do something similar when i make a custom rack. Why make a rack when I allready have one, you ask? Well, for the fun of it. I like projects like this, just don't have the skills you have will the cad drawings. Keep it up, im subscribed.