SkidMarx garage

[SkidMarx]

First off, I'm cheap, impatient and in need of some crossbars.
If I can't get what I need from my pile of scrap and buckets of misc nuts and bolts, I MIGHT see if they have something that will work at Home Depot.
If I strike out there, I'll redesign whatever it is i'm trying to make to use what I have.

After reading through the The Roof Rack Thread and checking out Matt's low profile mounts and Sal-XK's UniStrut crossbars, I came up with a plan.

Luckily they have UniStrut at Home Depot, because I don't have any on my scrap pile and I really like the stuff.
The mounts are kind of tricky due to the rail sides not being flat.
I'm not sure what Sal did, but I tried a few things that would use a single bolt, but my scrap pile let me down.
Matt got around this by using u-bolts and a slotted plate which is a cool idea that I stole.

After a couple of false starts, I came up with this pile of junk.

4 u-bolts
flat stock (3/16 I think)
the stuff with holes in it (1/8ish)
A hunk of pipe
A hunk of conveyor belt. (Matt used 'Fiber reinforced silicone rubber'. That's just a fancy name for conveyor belt)
Some rusty nuts that fit in the slot in the rails.
Not shown are some washers, nuts, and thick walled hose

After several hours and beers I ended up with this.


The nuts are welded off center and the 2 pieces of pipe are cut at an angle so that the u-bolt has room to pivot.
The pipe was then welded to the other side of the plate.

Instead of paint, I used spray on Plasti-Dip. Hopefully it will be a little more durable.

Assembled


Didn't like it so I dug up the black hose and ended up with this.

(shhhh...don't tell anyone my welds look like crap.)

With the hose on there, the crossbars are completely isolated. Not something I was shooting for, but nice that it turned out that way.

All done.

I'm going to use some Nylocks for the top nuts and cut the extra off the u-bolts.

I'm thinking of using bed-liner on the UniStrut since I'll be using it on the rack. Haven't decided yet.


Next up is to pick up some UniStrut hardware to attach the rack, and get the rack stripped since the paint is flaking off anyway.

More to come...

[pjmjr508]

looks great

[Matt]

Nice job man!!!!

[Sal-XK]

Nice job man! I used a single bolt that captured the lip inside the rail then wen't threw the hole on the unistrut. Also since unistrut is made to hang bars from just measure the tube or bar on your roof rack and get the size pipe mount for unitstrut you need to easy bro keep up the good work. We love to see mods not out of a catalog around here

[IamJEEP]

Nice Jeep bro, love that color!

Nice job on the cross bars.

[SkidMarx]

Nice job man! I used a single bolt that captured the lip inside the rail then wen't threw the hole on the unistrut. Also since unistrut is made to hang bars from just measure the tube or bar on your roof rack and get the size pipe mount for unitstrut you need to easy bro keep up the good work. We love to see mods not out of a catalog around here

Thanks all.

Already have the unistrut 3/4" mounts, but the side rails are square and I'm not liking how they hold. I may just bend them up a bit or,
I think I'm going to pick up a bunch of the unistrut nut thingies with the springs on the back and try to use the brackets that were on the old crossbars.

[lekmedm]

Some rusty nuts that fit in the slot in the rails.

Oh, my....




j/k

[SkidMarx]

Oh, my....




j/k

Wow...it took a long time for someone to pick up on that.

Nice catch.

[SkidMarx]

Finally got a chance to finish the basket.
I didn't get any pix of the paint stripping, but it wasn't that hard. Just took a lot of time.
The paint was flaking off so badly, I was able to get most of it off with high pressure air.
Most of what was left came off with a good carbide paint scraper.
The scraper really scratched/gouged it up, but I used a wire wheel on a die grinder as the last step and that smoothed everything back out.


The wire wheel left the surface nicely roughed up so after a wipe down with acetone, I primed it with Aluminum primer.
Once that dried, It got several coats of DupliColor Spray on Bed liner.

I like the texture.

Then back on the Jeep.




I also sprayed the UniTrack with PlastiDip. I don't know if it will hold up, but if it doesn't, I'll peel it off and use bed liner.

It looks kind of small up there. I think it needs something to add some length.
Lights or an air deflector maybe?

[Sal-XK]

Good job man! It looks a little small up there just throw on a light bar and you'll be good