Roof rack for teardrop RTT

nick.

New member
I wanted to ask the collective if anyone had any ideas on the best roof rack setup to put a RTT on my home built teardrop?

The tear has 3/4 plywood sides that are setup to carry a lot of load, so my initial thoughts on this were to buy a set of thule 953 (11" high) or 387 (8" high) gutter mount feet, then mount a set of either the thule or yakima (leaning towards yak since they have 4 bolt holes) artificial raingutter plates on the sides of the trailer. This seems like it would be a good setup that would potentially get me the height I need to open the teardrop vent, but also transfer the load of the tent into the solid load bearing vertical walls.

I've done some fairly extensive googling and searching on tnttt but it seems like the expo crowd is much more versed on the kinds of loads that we are talking about here. Anyone have any good solutions for a solid rooftop rack setup that would let me mount a tent? Pricing the thule stuff out, it becomes apparent that the costs are going to add up fairly quickly, and I'm a bit skeptical about the ability of the thule feet/ bars to stand up to the static load of a rtt with a 200# person sleeping in it. I've also considered going to my local fab shop and pricing how much it would cost to have them weld up a custom rack with vertical metal plates and heavy wall metal tubing crossmembers. I'd imaging if I went this route, I'd still drill holes through the sides for the mount.

Anyway, if anyone has any insite on what has worked before, I would appreciate it. Thanks!
 

compactcamping

Explorer
Here is the Towers RedM101A2 was referring too.

37101553604_f5f67d3cd0_c.jpg
 

Justins_TJ

New member
20171009_180519.jpg
I used the yakima gutter brackets with the 4 bolts. I had to get longer screws for my setup but it's plenty strong enough. Height wise though, I can open the roof fan lid but not very much with the towers and load bar with a basket up there. I got the spacer kits but I haven't tried them out yet. Keep an eye on eBay, I got my towers for $100 used and cleaned them up.
 

ottsville

Observer
You can pick up used thule or yakima (or any other rack stuff) off of craigslist. If you have time, watch the truck toppers for sale and used vans(older vans especially). I found a topper for sale that had some rack stuff I wanted and the guy sold me the rack stuff super cheap.

You could make a rack pretty easily, but you might spend more money getting a good quality, durable finish. Gutter brackets are easy to make and if you google around you'll see some ideas.

Just make sure your teardrop can handle the lateral loads of the added weight.
 

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