OK4WD Daily Driver / Overland Rubicon

[TTEPHOTOS]

STUNNING build, really similar to where I am headed when mine comes to England in July. I won't be so worried about the stock look however and will be throwing in some utilitarian styling with Poison Spyder and LOD offroad equipment. Would love more thoughts on the Expedition 3 mounted, and any more photos you can provide and opinions. Finding jeeps with this setup loaded is rare to say the least it seems and I am heavily teetering tword and expedition 3 setup with the shadow awn. Looks wise though it does carry more bulk I wish there was a rack to get it more flush to the roof to compensate its thickness. The competition is your JB setup, love that mounts have been made to accomidate the Alucab awn to the rack. Would love to talk about what you could do to help me out on an initial buy order!

Also hey its been 6months, lets get an update!


EDIT - His inbox is full am I out of the loop on something?

 

[rino]

STUNNING build, really similar to where I am headed when mine comes to England in July. I won't be so worried about the stock look however and will be throwing in some utilitarian styling with Poison Spyder and LOD offroad equipment. Would love more thoughts on the Expedition 3 mounted, and any more photos you can provide and opinions. Finding jeeps with this setup loaded is rare to say the least it seems and I am heavily teetering tword and expedition 3 setup with the shadow awn. Looks wise though it does carry more bulk I wish there was a rack to get it more flush to the roof to compensate its thickness. The competition is your JB setup, love that mounts have been made to accomidate the Alucab awn to the rack. Would love to talk about what you could do to help me out on an initial buy order!

Also hey its been 6months, lets get an update!


EDIT - His inbox is full am I out of the loop on something?

Hey thanks for the kind words and sorry for the inbox. A few updates I need to post up here when I'm back from Vermont.

 

[rino]

LONG OVER DUE UPDATE

So between getting married, work, moving twice in a single year and the rest of life I have been slacking on this build thread! The Jeep is still my daily driver and the continual tweaking has not stopped. As i had mentioned earlier, this winter project was to figure out a way to lower and expand the AEV / Rhino Rack system. I love the mounting of the AEV system and how it is rock solid on the roll cage, however the for lack of a better term "plastic" legs and 6mm hardware were not very confidence inspiring with 250 or so pounds riding on them at 80mph and frequent off-roading. The design does not have a bolt passing from rack to leg or even from leg to roll cage it relies entirely on the "plastic" of the legs, but to the other important factor needing attention, the height. The stock legs sit the roof rack to a very user friendly height, but one other thing I was aiming to achieve was a lower and more sleek appearance.

Attempt I

A customer and friend designed and created a set of custom legs machined of Delrin for our JKs.

Compared to the stock legs it lowers the rack the full height of that previous leg.

So now the problem... The rack is so low that installing the tent is impossible because the legs cannot be tightened from inside the vehicle. My friend used Rhino Rack HD cross bars that share the same mounting as the platform, giving him room to tighten his Alu-Cab tent down. So back to the drawing board.

 

[rino]

Attempt II

So back to square one (why I do this stuff in the winter) and the search was on to see if inspiration could be drawn from any other rack system on the market. I came across the Maximus 3 version of the Rhino Rack platform and instantly noticed the low profile and steel leg design. After contacting Maximus 3 and comparing measurements, the bolt pattern of their foot is different than that of the AEV. I asked if they would be interested in an AEV "retro" foot and they were! A few weeks later and these little guys landed at the shop. No more M6 hardware and "plastic" legs, now we are working with M8 stainless hardware and nylock nuts with a solid connection from roll cage mount to platform!

]

Success! :victory: Now in theory I can bolt my tent and awning to the rack and bolt the assembly down from inside the Jeep.

 

[rino]

Custom Pioneer Platform

So with the leg situation figured, the item to address was the platform itself. The AEV version of the Rhino Rack Pioneer Platform measures 76" x 55", perfect for average users or anyone looking to just run a RTT and simple awning. For the Alu-Cab Shadow Awn and James Baroud combination to work properly i was looking for a little bit longer platform to accommodate the awning mounts and still wide enough to protect the tent if things got hairy off-road. The Rhino Rack 42113BF fit the bill dimension wise, the flat pack option allowed for placing the cross bars to meet the pattern of the AEV supports and to top it off was all black!

Now onto mounting the Shadow Awn, last year I put the Jeep into a few instances where the awning sacrificed itself a tad for the better of the Jeep. Knowing this type of situation would most likely arise again, I opted to run two of the rear mounts to support the awning. These Alu-Cab mounts are HUGE! They are constructed from stainless steel and add a ton of rigidity to the platform, making them ideal if the awning is going to be used outside of normal off-road conditions. I was able to use a LHS mount in the rear and RHS mount in the front to secure the awning.

 

[rino]

With the tent and awning mounts mounted to the rack, the rack install went just as planned and was tightened from the inside!

Now it is time to finish this project up and get the awning mounted! A bit of a sneak peek, I received a new prototype awning bag from Alu-Cab! (these will be available soon).

Awning on!

 

[Gear]

Looks great!

 

[TTEPHOTOS]

Wicked work and thanks for the update. Due to my placing in England, I am thinking of going with the Frontrunner Extreme rack but still teetering on the expedition 3 and the JB. Going to shoot you a PM for some opinions and possible ordering!

 

[Trav]

Any plans for upgrading your Photobucket account? I wanted to check you build out but none of the photos are loading

 

[14JKURX]

Rino
Your pictures are not showing up.

 

[patsfan]

Hi Rino

Were you in Massachusetts yesterday? A rig driving in the other direction looked very similar to yours.

 

[TrailBadger]

Because of Photobuckets new terms of agreement, Any bucket member reaches their limit for "free" image storage, Their service is shut down. The only way to reactivate this 3rd party image hosting is by locating a new image host which doesn't charge $399.00 to activate. Which is odd to see that a "vendor" uses free image storage..

 

[unkamonkey]

I knew there is a reason I haven't posted a photo for years and I gave up on Photobucket years ago. It is sad that the hackers got in and corrupted many sites so you can't post a photo directly to a page anymore. Whatever, I'm having fun with my email right now. I know how to go sort of sideways to get to where I want to be. I'm never going to pay that much for a service that is a pain in the rear to use.

 

[Ranger Steve]

Because of Photobuckets new terms of agreement, Any bucket member reaches their limit for "free" image storage, Their service is shut down. The only way to reactivate this 3rd party image hosting is by locating a new image host which doesn't charge $399.00 to activate. Which is odd to see that a "vendor" uses free image storage..

What's so odd about someone using free image storage?

 

[TTEPHOTOS]

I would suggest IMGUR from here on out for anyone wondering where to go.