chipped roof rack..anyone painted theirs?

[lovnmy99runner]

My roof rack is peeling and cracked and looks awful. My truck is pretty clean... only a few chips and scratches, 1 ding on the bumper (im going to get a paint job this summer tho)..but the roof rack is AWFUL. I really don't want to spring for a new one. So can they be painted? We have a sprayer at the house. Or should I look into professional powder coating? I don't want to shell out as much as a new one tho! lol!

Also, are roof racks hard to remove?

Thanks!!

 

[fenrisx]

They can be painted.

I painted all the crossbars on mine this past summer. I didn't think to take the 2 rails off and paint those, but I'll do that once it's nice out.

I just taped off the parts of the crossbars that weren't metal (each end is a plastic, as well as a rubber strip down the middle of the two large crossbars), then I sanded the metal parts, washed them off, primered them, and sprayed them with a few coats of Rust-O-Leum Hammered finish.

Turned out pretty good, and was easy to do.

 

[Rc4r]

I painted mine with bed liner and plasti dip

 

[vooduguru]

I would paint it with this:

When summer comes, I'm going to buy a couple quarts of this in black, scrub with a wire brush all the loose paint/rust off my axle, undercarriage, and paint. :guitar3:

 

[rjaudi]

I painted mine with some Rustoleum universal satin black. Came out pretty good, I am very picky and think it looks nice. I did sand them down to the bare aluminum and primed them.

 

[sethish17]

painted mine with plasti dip and it looks great.

 

[kruegs]

Silly question for those that plasti dip'd theirs... did you remove the rack before you did it? I would prefer not to remove it if possible, just not sure that will work. Thx.

 

[vooduguru]

Y'all ought to check into the POR-15 It's good chit

 

[SRSRunner]

Silly question for those that plasti dip'd theirs... did you remove the rack before you did it? I would prefer not to remove it if possible, just not sure that will work. Thx.

Your going to have to remove it- its easy to do though, youll need a star bit to get the two pieces that are attached to the roof. It Only took about 10 min to get the whole assembly off.

 

[StarGazer2063]

Roof Rack

Aren't the roof rack rails aluminum? If so, I plan to just strip off the paint, then polish them. Curious what the cross members are made of?

 

[ryankmasuda]

I got a question for those of you that have removed the roof rack rails. When you remove the roof rack rails using the torx bit, do you then need to silicone when you re-install the roof rack to avoid water leaks? also will any of the hardware drop into the roof if I'm not careful?

 

[josh.bunch]

Just taped off and painted mine. Didnt remove. Looks x1000 better.

 

[BrianSD_42]

I painted mine. I advise you don't take it apart. I removed mine then took it apart.

it was a huge pain to put back together. looking back, I should have just removed it from roof (easy) then painted it as one big piece sitting on a tarp.

 

[Beach Runner]

You can remove the torx bolts with no problem. The threaded inserts won't "fall" in. I assume they are tacked in place. As far as reinstalling, I used foam gasket material from a weatherproof electrical coverplate. I heated the head of a #8 framing nail with a lighter and "stamped" a hole in the gasket material. Did this 10 times roughly 1" apart. Then cut them into individual gaskets. Haven't had a leak yet. That said, I'm sure silicone would work as well. I did disassemble mine to paint and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Just curious as to how long the Rustoleum satin black will hold up over time. I sprayed 2 coats of primer and 3-4 coats of satin.

1996 Toyota 4runner 022.jpg (131.1 KB)

Sorry, don't know how to resize pics :shrug:

 

[ultimatt]

I took mine off, took it apart, and had it powdercoated. I could tell from the peeling paint that it was going to be a PITA to get a good finish (lots of sanding, priming, and multiple final coats).

I found a local shop that sandblasted all the parts and powdercoated them all for $40. Considering what I would have spent on sandpaper, primer, paint, and time - I considered the $40 well spent.

The rack turned out great and I have had it for over a year with no signs of problems. I will caution you to be careful with the plastic parts at the front and rear of the rails. They get very brittle and could break very easy, and from what I hear if you break one you cannot get a replacement unless you source the parts yards.

 

[theizzardking]

i used the rusto-hammer finish because of what was stated above came out looking good imo and hard to notice imperfections with teh hammer/wrinkle type finish on it

 

[ryankmasuda]

You can remove the torx bolts with no problem. The threaded inserts won't "fall" in. I assume they are tacked in place. As far as reinstalling, I used foam gasket material from a weatherproof electrical coverplate. I heated the head of a #8 framing nail with a lighter and "stamped" a hole in the gasket material. Did this 10 times roughly 1" apart. Then cut them into individual gaskets. Haven't had a leak yet. That said, I'm sure silicone would work as well. I did disassemble mine to paint and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. Just curious as to how long the Rustoleum satin black will hold up over time. I sprayed 2 coats of primer and 3-4 coats of satin.

1996 Toyota 4runner 022.jpg (131.1 KB)

Sorry, don't know how to resize pics :shrug:

Thanks for the info, I think I'll just mask off the area around the rails.

 

[cj80cruiser]

I took mine off, took it apart, and had it powdercoated. I could tell from the peeling paint that it was going to be a PITA to get a good finish (lots of sanding, priming, and multiple final coats).

I found a local shop that sandblasted all the parts and powdercoated them all for $40. Considering what I would have spent on sandpaper, primer, paint, and time - I considered the $40 well spent.

The rack turned out great and I have had it for over a year with no signs of problems. I will caution you to be careful with the plastic parts at the front and rear of the rails. They get very brittle and could break very easy, and from what I hear if you break one you cannot get a replacement unless you source the parts yards.

I didn't have a factory roof rack on mine and thought it looked silly without it. You should still be able to get the plastic endcaps. I bought some last year in October/November after piecing my roofrack together from a scrapyard and Hepar sending me the cross bars. Thanks again Hepar.

I had no choice but to remove the bolts on top and used some black silicone to ensure there were no leaks. Even though my parts came from 3 different places all the parts went together easily. If I were to paint mine again it would be coming off but painted as one solid piece.