James Baroud Supplier Kudos

[brentbba]

I purchased a James Baround Evasion from my local JB dealer, Nomad Ventures down in Escondido. Super happy with the tent! Bruce at Nomad offers mounting as part of his service and he went WAY ABOVE AND BEYOND with my installation and I need to let anyone in SoCal considering a JB know to give him a shout!

I've got an INTI rack on my Landcruiser. I'd removed the side rails in preparation for the JB. The rack has 3 crossbars and several vertical aluminum slats. It was going to be close as to whether the C channels would allow the mounting brackets to drop down directly or if I'd need to modify some of the slats. I came prepared for the worst. Good news is that the brackets dropped down just inside the slats. The bad news was that the supplied bracket bolts from JB were too short for MY rack cross bars. The bolts were 70mm and I needed 80mm.

Bruce did not leave me stranded! What should have been a simple 45 minute to an hour install turned into a 5 hour ordeal as we figured out how to make longer brackets. Bruce went to a local hardware store no less than three times to get what we needed to 'make' longer brackets. I won't go into all the gory details, but suffice it to say that Bruce and Nomad Ventures went way above and beyond to help me get the tent secured for the trip home! I've since had 80mm length bolt brackets fabricated, but I just felt it necessary to let this community and the distributor (OK4WD/Rino) know about the exceptional service Bruce and Nomad gave me. :exclaim::safari-rig:

 

[Utah KJ]

Bruce... we speak your name... :bowdown:

 

[rickc]

Brent: Please take and share pics of your mounting solution; this is a really common issue as our racks and tents are all different. I also made several rips to the fasteners shop and Home Hardware to get my set-up the way I wanted it.

 

[brentbba]

Rick,

No pics - the brackets are exactly the same as supplied from the factory, but with 80mm bolts instead of 70mm bolts.

Our short term solution used the same blank lower bracket piece for the upper. We used 3 1/2" carriage bolts (just a little longer that 80mm), and a washer under the bracket with a lock nut to secure the bolt. The longer bolt made it too difficult to get lock nuts started so we used regular nuts to secure the lower bracket. We had to use a cut off wheel to slice off the sides of the washers to allow the entire upper bracket to sit on the C channel. The washer was necessary as the nut alone wouldn't tighten up to the upper bracket. Carriage bolts have a square piece under it's head designed to sit firmly in a square 'hole' or into wood. That square extended below the bracket making a washer necessary to secure the nut tight enough for the bolt not to spin as we tightened the lower nuts.

To complicate things, the center carriage bolt on the tent C channel is reversed with the smooth head of the bolt inside the tent so you don't feel the nut lying down! The bolts on the ends securing the C channel to the tent have the bolt head in the channel and the nut inside the tent. On my rack, the center cross bar was right where that nut was and we couldn't slide the center bracket into place with a full carriage bolt head! Four brackets are really plenty, but my OCD wanted brackets on all three cross bars. Four brackets we put together were more than enough to get home safely and probably good permanently, but I had concerns about the upper nut securing the upper bracket working loose and the double regular nut also working itself loose on the bottom. My OCD kicked in again as we used 5/16 fully threaded bolts for our short term solution. I wanted metric for a final solution as those are the tools I carry for my Toyota.

My final solution was zinc coated 80mm bolts, partially threaded from McMaster-Carr. I'd only found fully threaded 80mm bolts from a UK company - none from US suppliers. At least McMaster published specs on the length of the partial threading - 22mm. I figured if the supplied 70mm bolts came just to the bottom of my cross bars that 80mm would be enough below the bars to put the lower bracket on and thread on a locknut and still leave enough threading above the cross bar to allow for the bend you get on the lower bracket when you tighten the lower nut. It did! I had a local fabricator tack weld on the 12 bolts (two per bracket obviously) to the blank brackets Nomad and I had used. Factory used one tack weld per bolt and I had my guy tack weld both sides of the bolt down the center for added strength even though one weld the factory used was plenty strong. I also had him grind down the top of the carriage bolt on two of the finished brackets to hopefully slide under that center nut on the tent C channel. They did! Last thing I did was purchase some galvanized zinc spray paint to use on the raw welds and ground bolt heads. I taped off the threading and put a couple of coats on the brackets. Once dry we remounted the tent using the new brackets with 80mm bolts and corresponding lock nuts. That remounting took less than an hour and I now have a very secure tent using all three cross bars with metric bolts and nuts so I have the proper tools in the truck to tighten the brackets as might be necessary from time to time.

Again, the support I received from Bruce at Nomad was above and beyond! Remember, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the tent, how it mounts or supplied brackets. All this was because the cross bars on my INTI rack are deeper than a standard Yakima or Thule cross bar.

 

[rino]

That is what we love to hear, the crew at Nomad Ventures is super solid and we are proud to have such great dealers!

Glad to hear that your solution is working out for your rack system and we have a bit of a even more "universal mounting kit" in the works to help fit even the most tricky racks.