spanish-road

that looks real nice, cannot wait to see the finished product.

aviator

Looks like a good mock up... don't forget to close the holes at the ends to help prevent rust... You can get thule/yakima "towers" that connect to the factory tracks...
With a little thought you could make a lift out segment for over the sunroof which could be a help for loading the rack or emergency egress if you get "swamped" or in a roll-over...

Booosted Supra

Yeah I was thinking about making a door or something over the roof, as for the rear tower for the factory rails, my local shop tried getting them for me and they were on backorder from their distributor and out of the like 6 bike shops I called they were the only ones that were ANY help at all, so for right now im stuck just using 2 thule load bar systems and doing something with the rear, which kind of sucks because I know I'm going to have to put some kind of riser on top of the rail because the thule system def sits a little higher than the factory rails, I'm pretty sure, and apparently reason being for that straight from thule is, they do not offer low rider feet because there tests show that having the gap in between the car and racks gives a path of air flow between the rack and car and over the top. Which I guess makes sense..

Booosted Supra

Hopefully it will be on the truck by Tuesday=) the only things holding me up is my buddy welding tomorrow, and the fit kit for my truck wont be in until Monday

Booosted Supra

Well the rack is all welded together and in the garage. I just put a coat of herculiner on it that I had laying around, so I figured a few coats of that and it will be ready to go on. I didn't do the light tabs yet, right now my primary concern is getting it on the roof, things like lights, jerry can holders etc can be added once on the truck, but so far so good. As soon as I get my load bars tomorrow i'll post more pics=) All in all the rack weighs about 65 lbs tops

turboboost

Wow, amazing fab work. How much did all the metal cost you, and how much did you buy exactly?

Booosted Supra

The metal cost me 95 dollars, I got 17, 12 foot sticks of 1x1 16 gauge box steel. I only used about 6.5 of them. I got so much for another project I'm working on for another vehicle. So far with the cost of the metal, the U-bolts, the bed liner I still had laying around, Thule load bar set I'm roughly right under 400 dollars total. My Thule load bars should be in tomorrow and I hope to get the rack up there this week. I'm going to mount the front half of the rack to a load bar over the rear passenger doors and one over the front doors with 3 u bolts per bar to hold the rack down. With the rear I'm going to use one factory load bar with a spacer to make up the height difference to the Thule bars since they sit a little higher than the factory with 3 u bolts on that bar as well.

Booosted Supra

Few more pics from this past weekend.

Welding it together finally!


More welding


All done with a coat of herculiner on it and drying


Sorry for the very very poor crappy cell phone pictures too

scuba

ouch, I would hate cutting all those bars..

But great looking rack..

hah..

Booosted Supra

Cutting the pipes actually wasnt to bad, it was only straight cuts with a chop saw. I hope to mount it today

Booosted Supra

FINALLY FINISHED!

More pics:





I still have to put 1` box ends on the end tubes and in a few weekends I'm going to add 4 front lights, and 2 jerry can holders, but for right now thats it. I drove it around for a while, there isn't really any noticeable change from what it was before, I'm very happy with my results

94Runner4x4

looks great! maybe i should get started on mine...if only the funds were a little better.

Booosted Supra

All in all with materials the Thule kit everything cost me right under 400 dollars, def beats out 1200 for a brand name one for sure

Booosted Supra

Speaking of looking at my back window, I just remembered I ordered a yota tech sticker in the marketplace of the "4runners4ever" design sticker and never got it, Anyone know how to get in touch with them? Last activity was 9-17-08 so I guess there gone?

aviator

Looks good... Sorry to hear about your sticker problems I'm not familiar with that one myself but I'll bring it to the rest of the staff's attention...

Booosted Supra

thanks! i'd really appreciate it, my rigs naked with out one=(

turboboost

Truly fantastic work, hopefully you don't mind if I borrow your general shape. I think I might make mine about 2' shorter though, just because I'm going to have to drill through the roof to mount it, since I have no factory roof rack.

Overall, well done. I commend you.

Booosted Supra

be my guest! thats why I put it up here, I searched around for a longgggggggggg time to find a good build thread on a roof length safari rack and there isnt really much out there, Alot of wants but nothing really done

tj884Rdlx

wow man! excellent work! make sure you give it a double coat of that h-liner so it don't rust away when you're down the shore!