Took off my roof rack and spare tire carrier.

The plate with the threaded inserts got mangled on the tire carrier, so I reached out to 80% Offroad to get a replacement plate. I'll cut out the old one and weld in the new one and see if I can beef it up at all. Or I may just tap some threads into a piece of stock and weld the whole stock into the swingout arm. Either way, I have options.

It's apparent that this tire carrier was not made for woops and taking hits, and that's ok. Obviously nothing against 80% Offroad, I am just using this kit outside of their intended usecase! The whole carrier piece is still useful if I want to adapt it to a new rear bumper in the future.



I haven't really used my roof rack for anything other than carrying recovery gear and an awning, but I can easily fit that gear inside the cab. I also don't need to be carrying it 100% of the time. I have used my awning twice, so it doesn't feel necessary to carry either. So I took the whole rack off.

I adapted a luggage pod pulley kit to my garage ceiling to store the rack above the car. I am not confident in the pulley kit alone to hold the roof rack up, so I secured each corner with a ratchet strap around a ceiling joist.




Overall I really dig the "naked" 4Runner look, but now I have a ladder leading to nowhere. But it's so much quieter on the road. Almost all the rattles are gone so I'm tempted to just leave it all off forever.