bdiggity

In a few weeks I'm going to be doing Hole in the Rock with some friends and family. After we got together to plan out the trip, we all realized we need lots of extra fuel and water and lots of other gear but we don't have enough room inside our rigs. That's when I decided it'd be nice to make a roof rack to put the extra fuel and gear up top and out of the way in the interior since there will be 3 other people in my Jeep with me for the trip.

I wanted to make the rack as big as possible. I figured if something is going to be on top of the Jeep it should take up the whole space available. I decided to make the base frame 78"x54". I used Google Sketchup to make my design.















I used 1" x 1" square tube for most of it and 5/8" x 5/8" square tube for the bottom bars. I wouldn't recomend that though with how wide I built it. I'm going to need to throw in some cross bars going down the middle to support the weight of my spare tire.

I didn't get many pictures of the acutaul build. But I started out by making the bottom frame. I cut two 78" peices and two 54" peices. Cut 45 degeree angles on the ends. Laid it out and welded it together. The cross bars came next and they are the 5/8" tube cut to 52" and there are 10 of them spaced 7" apart. Once I had those in place and welded I moved onto the side posts. These are 4" tall and there are 12 of them. I started at the back and welded in the corner ones. Then I cut another 54" peice with 45 degree agles for the top back bar and tacked that in place. Then I put in the two posts between the corners. Next I cut two 83" peices for the top long bars. In able to support those while figuring out all the angle I need to cut I put the front 4" supports in. That way I could rest the top bar on that and cut the other posts cut and put in place, as well as figure out the angle for the front bars that turn into the light rack. The front bars that go up from the bottom frame are 11" long and I'm not exactly sure what angle they are pointing up at, I just eyeballed it. The actuall bar that the lights are connected to is 54" wide and I put 4 tabs on it to mount the lights.

After everything was welded together, I put it on top of the Jeep and centered it to find out that it just a tad to wide for my taste. If it had just been 1" narrower it would have looked much better. Oh well, I still like it. I made some gutter mounts out of some exhaust hanger we had at the shop.



With the rack in place I cut the exhaust hanger to the right length and tacked it in place. I only used 4 of them for the whole thing. I bent the part of the mount that hooks onto the mount with a hammer and vice and that was a lot harder to do than I thought. The first one was easy, but trying to match the rest up to the first was very hard.

This is what it looked like right after it was mounted-



When I got home I mounted up the lights and put the spare tire a little further back-





I still need to grind down some of the edges and paint it silver to match the Jeep.

If anyone wants the sketchup file, I can send it your way. That way you can have the exact dimensions of everything.

pickles

Very nice work man! How much does it weigh?

aquickmopar

Man I Love that rack. You did a great job. I'm gonna make mine VERY similar but do a couple things different. But its pretty close to how I want mine made. Thanks for getting the dimensions already done up for me. I'll go ahead and probably cut off about 1-2" on the width so it doesn't hang off the sides. But man it looks great.


Also if you could send me that scetch up file that would be great. Thanks.

BLXJ

Nice rack, what kind of finish you going to use?

bdiggity

It weighs about 60 pounds. I should have used the 1"x1" square tube for the cross bars instead of the 5/8" x 5/8" to make it stronger, but that would have made the total weight 78 pounds and I wanted to keep it as light as possible.

Thanks! Here is the link for the sketup file- http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...35568&result=4

I'm thinking that I'll just use silver spray paint to match the rest of the trim. Do you guys have any other suggestions on how and what to paint it with?

crbnfibr

i like to use this on stuff
http://www.krylon.com/products/rust_...ered_finishes/

sweet rack btw

tkeehn

Nice man I like the look it gives. How much weight can u put on the gutters? I know the factory rack is not much.

tkeehn

Oh and I use a bed liner paint to do my stuff. You can get some a PPG that you can add color too. About $100 a bottle tho but its tuff stuff and I like the way it looks.

Vstahl

nice rack, it is a near match to the one I built with the angled light hoop in the front.

KHarry

Nice rack, the look is great. I'm definitely gonna use your idea, maybe a couple inches shorter on the width. Where/how are you going to run the wiring for the lights? Well done sir.

Guttrshark

Whats that google sketch business? is that a paid program? that would have come in very handy when i started my rack!

Cobradwight

I really like your rack. Any interest in making some for people? Wonder what it would cost to ship something like that? Also wanna know how much weight the gutters can hold as well?
Thanks

bdiggity

It is a free program and works really well once you get the hang of it. The learning curve is pretty steep, but the have a tutorial for anything that you'd want to do. Search sketchup and you should be able to find it.

bdiggity

I think it's be fun to make these for other people, but right now I don't have the time or equitment of my own to build them. I'm going to college full-time and working so I don't have to much free time.

As far as the weight the gutter mounts can hold, I've had myself and my brother sitting on the rack with the spare tire and camping gear. That adds up to about 450 or so pounds and it seemed to hold strong. On Warrior's website it says their roof rack can hold 400lbs on the highway and 150lbs off-road. With the gutters being part of the unibody, I think that they are really strong and not going break unless you have some major weight up there.

bdiggity

I was finally able to get the roof rack painted and I decided to paint it silver to match all the silver trim on my jeep. I used the Rustoleum Metalic finish and I like how it turned out.

I also had a chance to test out the rack. We went down to Hole in the Rock in Utah and had all of our camping gear and the spare tire up there and it worked really well with lots of room to spare. Unfortunately the Jeep had some issues and never made it all the way to the trail (exploring Goblin Valley State park we went over some sand dunes and somehow the fan clutch went into the radiator and gave the radiator a nice little leak. Thank goodness for AAA and free towing).

Here are some pics-