Factory Roof Rack repair
 

Hey guys,

Been doing some research on what to do in my current situation and haven't come up with something thats fitting the bill exactly and would love some insight.

Here's the sitch:

I have a Wilderness rack by Garvin, its 50"x52"x4" Currently it is mounted to my factory roof rack rails. I keep my HiLift and my 30" spare up there and they have been up there for almost 2 years. Welp, I should have gone with the gutter mounts when I originally bought it, b/c after the time of me wheeling and driving the Jeep, the weight of the spare and the jack have pulled the back two bolts of the factory rails through the roof.

Pics below. My original plan was to just get rid of the rack mounts and go to the gutters, HOWEVER I'm struggling to find someone who sells gutter mounts by themselves that will mount to my rack.

Here's what I've found:
JCR sells gutter mounts, for a very reasonable $40 some bucks but they are weld on and really won't work in my application.

I've checked with Garvin as well and they sell the gutter mounts....for $179....So not doing that. Also, apparently Garvin only makes the mounts for a 54" wide rack so they would't work anyway.

A few other company's sell gutter mount rack bars, but they are for light bars and such and I don't know if they would handle the weight of a rack with my gear and when I load it up.

So what I'm looking at now is repairing the factory mounts and roof.......So far unable to find info on this, I have done quite a bit of searching on it as well.

Anyone who has had this happen to them that can shed some light on this would be HUGELY appreciated.

Thanks for your time guys, also I couldn't decide which section to put this in so I went here.

more info
 

Using a screwdriver to hold the rack up from the roof so you can see how the bolts pulled the nutserts?... at least I'm pretty sure they are nutserts or something, like I said, not a lot of info on the factory roof rack system.

Again thanks for any insight I can get on this.

-Alex

I suppose you've thought of all of this already:
The only options I can come up with all include remove the headliner, (which is a chore)
Drilling out the holes in the roof and going with a larger nutsert is one choice, provided there's room inside the rail for the larger bolt head.
Adding nuts and bolts with fender washers is the other. You'd probably need to bend the fender washers a little to match the curve of the roof to get them to set right or risk cracking the paint on the roof.

I'm looking at the dent in the roof in the lower picture and thinking you've got way more load up there then the sheet metal roof is going to take. I suspect you're going to have to spring for the expensive gutter mounts or lighten the load.

Sorry

Pic in post #12, actually, easy enough to make yourself if you are handy.

https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f58/roof-rack-68142/

options
 

Thanks for the replies... Still working on a good solution. I agree with you both as far as repair and possibly fabbing up brackets.

I'm gonna follow up with JCR and see if there is a way for me to just modify their brackets rather than build my own.

The whole thing is really a bummer tho...

Anyone have an opinion on getting these to work?

http://www.quadratec.com/products/12138_906_07.htm


Any thoughts appreciated.

-Alex

So I was able to come up with a solution. Ended up ordering JCR's gutter mount brackets. The brackets are technically weld on BUT I was able to clamp the JCR brackets with the Garmin factory roof rack mounts. I may eventually weld them to the Garmin mounts but for now I clamped those puppy's down tight and it's feeling real solid.

I'm a big fan of JCR I have their bumpers front and back and their customer service is really good. But they did not seem to think their mounts could be fitted without welding. I decided to throw the dice and buy them anyways and luckily it paid off. Just a not to anyone else in this situation.

A few photos of the set up, the only issue is that it's like a inch or two higher but I can live with it. Just happy to have my rack back:

Pics

So I decided to throw the spare, hi lift and lights back on the rack now that it has gutter mounts. The whole thing is still feeling really solid, but I am still nervous about all the weight up there because if I bust the gutters.... I'm sol.

Any one know of a situation where someone has busted gutter mounts just from having a 100-200 lb dynamic load up there? Really just looking for reassurance that I'm not gonna bust anything.

Thanks,

-Alex

Pic of the current set up

Bump, would love any input.

The gutters will hold more weight then the stock rack mounts.