New BajaRack being made for my FJ
 

I took the plunge, I just ordered a BajaRack for my Maggiolina AirLand tent.
It is similar to puulboy's in this thread.
http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forum...oof-tents.html
Ordered it through Mike at Autohome.

But it does not have the raised sides on each side up at the front section.
It does have a spoiler shield up front to block some of the wind.

This is the rack that was designed specifically for the Maggiolina and Columbus tents after we had a discussion a year back about getting a low profile rack made over on the blue forum.

You can see how high the base of my tent is here with the stock FJs rack.

http://www.pnw4runners.com/yotatech/6year/corey5a.jpg

http://www.pnw4runners.com/yotatech/8year/corey1.jpg

It will be sitting just barely off the roof with the new rack.
It will be shipped directly to my Toyota dealership for installation.
They will remove my tent, the stock rack, put on the new BajaRack, then install the tent.
They viewed Sergio's pictures yesterday, and they said it will be very easy to do this.
I would attempt to do it if I had a home and big garage, but I do not.
Plus it is a two person job to tackle this, the tent alone weighs around 128 lb not including the bedding inside.

I do not have any pics of the Maggiolina and the rack on Sergio's rig online, but I have two here I can attach.

Right now we have been having some strong winds, and it is just to hairy driving my rig at freeway speeds with my lift and the tent up so high.
So I decided the time is right to do this, especially before camping season starts up here before to long.
This should correct the issue for me.

https://www.yotatech.com/attachment....1&d=1269980123

https://www.yotatech.com/attachment....1&d=1269980123

Nice and low 'eh?
I am getting excited :D

After it is installed I will update my build thread here in the Build Up section.

Here are some pics from BajaRack of the mounting brackets.
Brackets go on first, then the tent goes on top.

Bolts on the brackets line up with the two channels on the Campinglab/ARB style of awnings, then nuts tighten against the channel surface, much like my present mounts for the Yakima bars.

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fj/bajara...8Custom%29.jpg

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fj/bajara...8Custom%29.jpg

I'm really looking forward to seeing how it all turns out. After you have it all together how much lower will the roof top tent sit?

I just got a Bajarack exp for my 100LC. So far I'm pretty pleased with it. Enjoy.

Thanks guy's.
I am thinking it will sit a good 10" or more lower.
I will take some before and after measurements of how high the tents base is off the top of the roof.

Like to have your old rack so I can see if I can retro fit it to my 2nd gen 4runner if you have no use for it that is

Cool :D

I prefer AC and room service. :hillbill:

:guitar:

very cool. the lower profile will be nice.

wow these are some long bolts for the application:
http://www.pnw4runners.com/fj/bajara...8Custom%29.jpg

The bolts can probably be shorter. Likely it was all they had around.

I'd think about having some tabs attached to mount some lights in front of the dam. or recessed in to it... If they are doing something semi custom anyway that is. 4 should do it... it would give you that complete rally look and be handy if you wanted to do some beach runs or evening trail rides...

I like the lower profile rack corey it looks cleaner and with the basket bottom much more usable than the factory one.

It would be awfully hard for me to ship it.
You can probably find them locally from rigs that go with a custom rack for $100 or so.
I think they were $500 new, mine was put on at the Port of Portland where the rig landed from Japan.
Ah but then you would miss out on memories like these :D

http://www.pnw4runners.com/pics/old_...more/camp2.jpg

http://www.pnw4runners.com/pics/old_...more/camp5.jpg

http://www.pnw4runners.com/pics/old_...more/camp1.jpg

They are a tad long.
This is my current setup, they are a little shorter.
I can swap out the bolts.

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fj/awning/2.jpg

Lower profile will be great.
I will never run roof top lights again.
I had them on the '91, and when they were on, the reflection off of my hood was blinding towards me.
The light was pretty much useless to me up there.
Now the hella 500s on the ARB bumper worked awesome though.

http://www.pnw4runners.com/tando/main.jpg

What you need is some of those "eye brow" light shades you see on some motorcycles/semi trucks but mounted up side down. They would prevent the light from striking the hood as much. Or use the focused pencil beam type lens or a combination of both. but it's your truck... you could try a few non-funstioning dummy lights up there just for the look LOL.

I remember my friend had a pair of 100Ws mounted on the roll bar of his 86 and they worked well for driving down country roads at night and did a masterful job of stripping the paint of his roof down to bare metal in two nice clean lines as well...

I will probably never mount any up there after the last bad experience with them.

Also found out since my rack is a special order and not made up ahead of time, it will now ship Monday the 19th.
Hopefully arriving at my dealer by Wednesday or Thursday so I can take a Friday off of work while it gets put on.

I was informed today that my rack was made, and it was test fitted on Sergio's FJ, the FJ in the pics above.

The rack still has to be powdercoated, and then it will ship next Monday.
The wait is now getting shorter.

Woo Hoo!

One more day :D
The rack is sitting at my dealer, it came in around 4 PM on Monday.
Awning brackets will show up today, and they are installing the new rack Wednesday.

Pictures to follow.

Awesome, Corey. I can't wait to see the finished product. :D

It is at the dealer.
Was going to take tomorrow off and show up when they opened, but I stopped by today to touch base, and they said to just leave the rig after we went over what was going to take place.

Got a 4 door Corolla loaner I think it is.
To small, I do not like being in something that small after being in a tank.

Hopefully it will be done early tomorrow, and I will cut out of work a little early.

This same info I am posting I will copy over to my buildup thread at a later date.
___________

OK, I called the dealer around 11:20 am today and they said they needed to see me, there was a "slight" complication, and they needed to talk to me before proceeding any further.

I got there and they showed me the front two latches on the tent were hitting a horizontal tube near the front of the rack which you will see in a picture below.
I called up BajaRack and company and spoke with Sergio and John, and they said we could move the tent backwards some on the rack.

The tech had gone to lunch by then so the service manager and I went to the shop and tried it, and they still hit.
Another tech who was working on a Toyota next to mine said they already tried that.
Sergio suggested I send him a picture which I did, and he saw the problem right away.
My latches were much longer than Frenchie's latches that were on the test tent they used when they mocked up the first rack.
Frenchie has the Maggiolina Extreme small version.
Same length as my Airland, but narrower.
His latches are also shorter which would not have been a problem for me if the latches were all the same.

Scott my tech who did a fantastic job installing everything suggested grinding down my latches to shorten them to clear the horizontal bar up front.
BajaRack will now be incorporating in the next racks like mine to not have the front horizontal bar.
The rack is very beefy, and one bar out will not hurt a thing.
Rack is overkill, it is well built.
The rig sure got lots of looks today from the dealership, and even Toyota corporate was there today visiting.

The latches clear completely now.
I could install new shorter ones, but that would involved popping these out and re-pop riveting in a new latch.
I think at this time I am not going to mess with it.

As you can see by the pictures, the rack sits much lower to the roof now, and the spoiler up front will block the wind from entering underneath.

If you would like to order one of these racks, give Mike a call at www.autohomeus.com
There is already a page in place being worked on for the FJ rack like mine.

Links:
BajaRack
Autohome US page for the racks (coming soon)

Two cell phone pics from the Droid showing the latch before it was ground down, and shortly after Scott drove up to the waiting area with my rig.

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fj/bajarack/1.jpg

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fj/bajarack/2.jpg

Regular pics

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fj/bajarack/3.jpg

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fj/bajarack/4.jpg

http://www.pnw4runners.com/fj/bajarack/5.jpg

:Dnice!

That looks awesome Corey. The rack is huge, but the design makes it look small. They did a great job in the design. :D