Roof Rack Basket

[Robinhood4x4]

Nice. I need to do something similar for my 4th gen, the roof rack isn't exactly useful the way it is.

[slosurfer]

Looks good!

[Obi..]

Make sure you go ahead and remedy this before it begins to show stress cracks, your left front of the rails twisted up and to the left..possibly just have to move the load bar a couple of mm or so inwards.
[img width=800 height=600]http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Roof%20Rack/DSC07726.jpg[/img]

[Lee]

that or the star bit isnt screwed in all the way?

[4x4mike]

Make sure you go ahead and remedy this before it begins to show stress cracks, your left front of the rails twisted up and to the left..possibly just have to move the load bar a couple of mm or so inwards.
[img width=800 height=600]http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e13/mezamichael82/Roof%20Rack/DSC07726.jpg[/img]

It's fine. I think you're talking about the piece of junk plastic beauty piece on the front o
's been like that for close to 2 years. It see's at least one bike 4 days a week and not one problem.

[4x4mike]

This roof basket was sized and built to fit between the Yakima bars and bike trays. Size wise it was a bit small but I wanted something that fit within the Yakima system since it was always on. The basket was sized to fit my then 4 gallon Rotopax, my folding table and water can holder (not all at once).

I've since removed my Yakima system and only use it occasionally to hold more bikes than my hitch mount rack will hold as well as my ski mounts. The factory crossbars are a bit boring and don't care for the loads I put on them during my weekend Home Depot trips plus I needed an additional project. Rail length wise I could not fit the basket and both factory cross bars as the factory bars have long feet. I decided to ditch the factory bars and increase the size of the basket. This would make it look a little less modular up there but also move it forward, off my Ham antenna, as well as give me a bit more storage space.

A larger basket would mean I couldn't run it with the Yakima but I was fine with that. The basket is light enough and easy enough to remove when needed. I had been toying with the idea of making a new one from scratch but there weren't enough things I wanted to change or add and didn't want another of the same thing. I kept the original squarish shape along with the tie downs because they hold my larger folding table as it was, plus I had built my water carrier around them and liked their placement for what I hold.

The new piece adds about 10 inches forward plus tie downs. I had been envisioning a short fairing of sorts but scraped that idea because didn't see a way of working it in nor really see a need for it. Instead I added a few more tie downs so it matched the height of the old side. Who knows what I'll put on this little shelf but I could see sleeping pads or firewood. I found a triangle piece in my scrap box and thought it would be perfect for a cross piece/place for a mag mount or flag mount. I ended up drilling it to the pattern of my flag mount which will be way stiffer than how I had it installed before.

While I had it off I drilled out and re-tapped the metal pieces that slide into the roof rails. I went with a much larger diameter bolt (M8 X 1.25) which is more at home holding something that get's loaded and romped on offroad. Sorry for the blurry picture. This is how a picture comes out while wearing gloves and coughing up a few hours of welding and paint fumes.



Old set up





New




Old flag spot. As you can imagine it was not very stiff and stretched out that part of expanded steel.



New flag spot

[Kryptoroxx]

Hey that looks good! I like the minimalist design but it certainly serves your purposes well. I also like how you incorporated the stock rail system for support so that you can switch back and forth.

[Good Times]

nice Mike! Gotta check that out at Pismo!

[Robinhood4x4]

A roof rack is on my to-do list this winter. You need some LED backup lights.