Nice work! This is what I was going to do for my og trail rack in the summer. I was looking at the niserack, but I do not want the rails to stick up that far above the supports. I do like the angled tie down features though.
I liked the NiseRack too, but the guy isn't responding. He was sick late last year and I don't know whether he's recovered. I'm an inventor anyway (I work with firearms), so I decided to come up with my own (simpler) brackets that anyone can make themselves:
I liked the hook loop idea, too. Each complete roof rack features four brackets and four lengths of 80/20 aluminum extrusion as crosspieces.
The green brackets are the low profile version. From left to right, the bracket without hook loops; then the rear bracket with hook loop; then the front bracket with hook loop. The low profile brackets are not symmetrical because of the difficulty in getting the assembled roof rack section past the shark fin.
The blue brackets are higher profile, which allows the total roof rack to be a little longer and also it can be assembled when the brackets are attached to the rails, so there’s no need to worry about getting the crosspieces past the shark fin antenna. From left to right again, the high profile bracket without hook loops; the rear bracket with front and rear hook loops; the front bracket with front and rear hook loops.
It remains to be seen whether these designs will be strong enough.
I think I saw somewhere else on this forum you are using 3/8" carriage bolts to attach the brackets? I will have to grab few and see if that works for the trail rack too.
It's really kind of weird, I don't know how a metric car, presumably designed in Japan, ends up accommodating a 3/8 inch carriage bolt perfectly. Also, for whatever reason, the distance between the rails is almost exactly 40½ inches, which is just under 1,029mm, hardly a nice round metric measurement.
), but it's a very impressive business model.
