Inyo_man
Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining.
Great set up! Very resourceful solution on the clamping units.
I've run a full sized rack mounted on the factory rails with no problems for a number of years.
However, I've heard from friends in Australia that they do eventually fail.
The OEM horizontal rails are attached to the roof mounts by way of two small tack welds (You can see these if you remove the plastic covers).
The horizontal bars on the factory rails will begin to pull down (towards the roof) and eventually separate from the roof "feet" when the small tack welds give up the ghost.
Rhino Rack makes a rack that utilizes the roof mounting tracks. Their HD rack comes with three cross bars, three track mounts and has 10mm clearance. This is on my list of future purchases. Right now, I just try not to overload the system, if it can be avoided.
I've run a full sized rack mounted on the factory rails with no problems for a number of years.
However, I've heard from friends in Australia that they do eventually fail.
The OEM horizontal rails are attached to the roof mounts by way of two small tack welds (You can see these if you remove the plastic covers).
The horizontal bars on the factory rails will begin to pull down (towards the roof) and eventually separate from the roof "feet" when the small tack welds give up the ghost.
Rhino Rack makes a rack that utilizes the roof mounting tracks. Their HD rack comes with three cross bars, three track mounts and has 10mm clearance. This is on my list of future purchases. Right now, I just try not to overload the system, if it can be avoided.