I own a 96 Cherokee and basically the buttons on the factory roof rack buttons will not depress enough to release the pin. I have tried everything from spraying a ton of lube in there to taking it apart. I need to have it fixed by ski season so any suggestions will help tremendously. Thanks.

 

With mine, those buttons broke off. I was able to use needle nose pliers to lift the stainless pins, & release the locks. I took mine off & got six new bars at the junkyard for $5.00 each.

I put all six on & like it that way.

 

dpnt force it. the pins can ruin the rail

 

Thanks guys. I figured out what was wrong. The buttons have two little teeth on the bottom. Mine were broken on three of the buttons. Those little teeth are essential to the operation because they provide enough leverage to lift the inside pin. The good thing is you can pop off the buttons with a flathead screwdriver and lift the pins by hand.

 

How did you release the pins to get to work? thanks

 

on my 96 xj was moving the bars closer together and the outer buttons broke. I was able to lift up pin inside and move them where I wanted to. I used a screwdriver to lift the pin then moved it slowly by myself. I put my tire on the rack... but am about to have to move the bars again because I have a roof rack coming in a few days.

 

Thanks, I have a 96 as well. I am assuming this is the pin, how the hell did you get a screw driver in there to do anything ?

 

we may have a different set up... on my bars the outside has a button on them. Once the buttons are gone there is a pin inside that the button pushed on. I lifted this up witha screwdriver and slide the bar.
sorry for the bright pic the sun is out in full force this morning.

 

Thanks, I got it. I just had to break the button off from the outside allowing me to press the pin up on the inside. thanks

 

no problem. I just had to do the same thing myself about 2 weeks ago lol. I had pushed the buttons on mine and they broke, all but 1 of the 4.

 

3 of mine broke too , haha worth it going camping /wheeling in fee hours needed more cab room

 

I recently took my rack off and I broke all my buttons because I didn't know what I was doing. There is a tiny nib at the top of each of these buttons that when you push them in they pop home into a little slot in the larger assembly. Frustrated I felt mine were stuck. I wrongly kept trying to push in on the little depression molded in the button. Wrong. I was pushing when I should have been pulling - a little too tough and I broke these nibs on all four buttons. What I realized is to make these things work the Jeep engineers expect you to release the buttons from locked position ( a small thin screwdriver or tool into the gap between the top of the button and the body of the cross rail end piece, called the pillar) and just pry the thing out a little bit and what happens is the button will pull out from the top and you push in at the bottom with your thumb, leveraging the pin inside the cross rail pillar up and down so you can slide the cross rail along the slide rail. So if you're touching these for the 1st time you do not push in on them to release the cross bars to slide them: they do not work that way. You have to pull out gently from the top and gently tilt them outward toward you:- put your thumb on the bottom pull out with your top index finger and this will shove the little pin upward so you can move the cross rails. If like me you broke them, and cannot find replacements, you can fix them by drilling a small hole in the top and putting a piece of metal like a piece of a paper clip inside but it won't really be original on it doesn't work too well. Far better to do your best and find another set of these things and just get the originals back in place.

Chris in Royal Palm Beach.
1987 Comanche longbed pickup
1996 Cherokee SE
1998 Cherokee Sport

 

Would the adjusters and crossbars from a 93 grand cherokee fit a 99 Cherokee sport? From what I see the width of the GC was 69.2 and the width of the 99 was 69.4. How precise are these numbers? Do they apply to the width between the rails?

 

I've had to pop the caps off and use a flat blade or multitool to lift the pins on every XJ I've had. I haven't bothered to fix them with new caps when I need to move the rails I just move them with my multitool

 

One of mine has actually been stuck in the unlocked position for a while. Something on the button broke a few years ago, and it's been stuck with the pin disengaged ever since. The button won't go in at all, but the crossbar still slides.

Reading this thread inspired me to pop off the button and take a look inside. Here's what I found. It looks like 2 out of 3 "teeth" on the bottom of the button have broken off, but I can't quite figure out how this mechanism works and what impact those teeth have. I figured the larger angled part is what forces the pin up, but on mine the angled part fits under the flat metal part, but it won't let the pin fully extend and lock. Any pointers how this works? Can you buy the buttons anywhere, or am I looking at a trip to the junkyard (or just use a screwdriver when I need to move it)?