I have a question. I have factory roof racks, but was wondering which supports more weight; factory racks, or if I bought ones that adapt to the rain rail. I am building my own safari type basket, but need to carry/support a lot of weight.

 

you will get much more strength from a rack that mounts to the rain rails and as soon as your done fabbing that bad boy up you need to post some pics.

 

Where are you at ? I have a conferr rack for sale with the gutter mounts, came off my 1990 xj

 

the factory MOUNTS are fine, but the factory rails, and rack are weak. rain gutters are ok...but I would hesitate to go VERY heavy on them, plus, depending on the rack, they block the gutters, and you get water pouring off all over the place.

I just built my own basket setup, and opted to remove the factory rails, put in new wellnuts, and use 78"x2" mount rails bolted to the 12 factory mount points. I've had upwards of 400lbs on there without an issue ( 1600km round trip over xmas set up that way...luggage, spare tire, etc,etc,etc)

heres a pic, and there are a bunch more in the photo album on my profile

 

I made mine and bought the brackets to mount to the factory rails i have put 500+lbs did fine just a little top heavy but the brackets are solid i can rock the whole jeep up the rack

 

Stillwater - how hard do you offroad? I tried that...both with the square threaded plates that come stock, and with bolts+washers, but heavy washboard a) stripped the threads on the stock pieces, b) ripped the bolt setup through the stock tracks...have you got another solution or just not had the problem? ( *** I even got extra plates from the local pick-n-pull: 8 mounts wasnt enough for my uses....)

that said...I'm looking into stronger alternatives than the wellnuts, too: havent had issues yet, but I do a lot of long distance forestry & logging road trips. a 500lb rack with all our camping gear on it isnt the sort of thing I want bouncing around loose with my kids in the back seat!!

 

Pretty hard long camping trips and live in the country on the dirt roads they some times get so bad of washboard cars have a hard time driving on the i go very fast bumpy ride with the lift but the bolts on the brackets are solid had it on for over a year now never have had to re tighten the bolts still as tight as when i put them on. Over the summer i loaded it with all the camping gear for moab never had a problem. But i guess it is personal preference i dont like the ones that mount to the gutters because it makes water go every where when it rains i have 4 brackets on the factory rails

 

got the brackets from wilderness assry kinda $$ but worth it

 

Can you post photos of your rack? I'd love to see what it looks like, how the mounting mechanism works, and how srong it is. What is it make out of?

s

 

LOL - my last attempt at 'in the stock rails' mounts was custom hold downs from 1"x 3"x1/4" steel stock, with dual 3/8" bolts per clamp, 8 clamps total, 16 bolts....bolts held, brackets stayed in place....but 5 of the holes stripped out on a bad section of frost heaves.

I've actually been trying to find out how easy it is to access the back side of the factory mount holes through the roof, in order to fit permanent, heavy mounts inside. havent seen a good description of how to pull the headliner without destroying it yet though....anyone???

 

Thanks for all the inputs. I will pull off my factory racks and see how I might be able to perminatly attach it without having the bolts strip. I might just go with the rain gutters if its too much of a pain. Kinda hard to work out of a 3rd floor apartment. Just kinda build in the living room and put on in the parking lot! LOL

 

haha. i had to.

but back on topic, i have mine mounted to the factory crossbars w/ homemade brackets. i haven't had a lot of heavy stuff up there, but haven't had any problems. its also a smaller basket.

 

Does anyone know how much the Cherokee's side rails can hold? I built my own tire carrier roof mount, it bolts into those side rails but now that i think about it, if they are pretty weak and the carrier rips them out and hits the car behind me, i'm liable lol

 

To answer your question indirectly, the Yakima roof rack I bough that mounts to the rain gutter rails says not to exceed 175lbs. I don't know if that is because of the rack limits or the rain gutter. That being said, I've seen prople with more than that one them.

s

 

I would only mount it to the rain gutters...I mounted a roof rack to my factory rails that go across the roof and I only put a spare tire (35x12.5) and a hi lift jack on it. The rear rail broke after about 6 months. and made my jeep very unstable with the weight shifting after it broke.