Ide be curious to see what you think about the weight of the roof rack when it's all said and done?!
Last Saturday, I went to Cars and Coffee with a few 3rd gen guys.
L to R: [MENTION=150041]t4r_rio[/MENTION], Me, [MENTION=80933]4x4runner2002[/MENTION], [MENTION=97491]Joerocho[/MENTION], Hannah
I really wanted to make it to this, but my rig wasn't quite done. I did meet Zach (4x4runner2002) a few days ago. He dropped by my place to give me some CVs in exchange for some fabrication work.
I go in for inspection next week, so hopefully I'll be able to cruise with some other 3rd Gens soon!
Any more info on your rack?
Stoked! I have been wanting to do a rack for some time! Glad I found this and the tacoma thread. I want to build it myself versus going out and buying one off the shelf like a gobi.
Do you know roughly how much weight it will carry?
Finished up the mounting the roof rack today. It feels very sturdy, especially considering it's a bolt together rack. I climbed up there today and walked around, at just shy of 200 lbs, I feel comfortable up there. I will say that the standing in the middle of the cross bars did have a little give but I'll never have much weight distributed on just two cross bars in the middle. I also will be adding lock nuts to all the bolts for the cross bars.
For mounting the rack to the roof in the back, I bolted a 4 inch section of left over Unistrut to the rack, running parallel with the cross bars. I took the end caps off the factory rail system and stid T-Nuts (4 per side) in there. I then bolted the 4 inch section to those.
I love the rack setup!
I'm unaware of what Gobi has done, care to tell us? I'm genuinely curious.
Also, do you have a profile shot of the passenger side of your truck with the arb 2000 awning?
Awesome!! Do you know how much your rack weighs itself? Rough idea?
Looks really elegant, love it. Just one question. I think I see how you bolt the 4-inch section to the rails, just using the factory mounts and a bolt+washer - but since Unistrut has holes on one side, where do you bolt the mount to the rack? Either side of the hole being used to mount to the rails?
Cheers!
So Unistrut kind of resembles a C-Chanel. On the top of the rack and all the cross bars, the open 'C' section is facing downward. For the 4-inch sections, they're facing upward.
The inner bolt for the cross bars is 1-inch in length and goes through the cross bar and into the 4-inch section. In each of the 4-inch sections, that 1-inch bolt threads to one of These.
With the open 'C' section of the Unistrut being up, I ran the mounting bolts through the openings/holes and into the T-Nut.
I hope that answers your questions, if not, feel free to ask.
So what I'm visualizing is that the lower part of the mount (the flat part of the c channel) is flush to the roof rail, and you use a short, thick bolt to attach that to the nut inside the OEM rail. Then to attach the mount to the rack, you use those spring nuts which sort of clamp inside the C channel. Sorry for getting so specific. Thanks for the help.
Hey man, I hate to ask such a boring question that's likely already been answered, but what aftermarket crossbar setup are you running? Are they the Yakima Q Towers? I'm in desperate need and can't find many solid answers.
Thanks!