Princess auto roof basket mounting suggestions please

[steelnwool]

Hi,

I bought this roof basket : http://www.princessauto.com/en/detail/250-lb-aluminum-roof-mount-cargo-carrier/A-p8304958e from princess auto. (canadian harbour freight)

Here is it mounted to my roof : http://imgur.com/a/XOK9z

Its a 2011 Subaru outback.

So its mounted. fine. Its not elegant and I'm looking for better suggestions. Some issues I've run into are

1: Subaru factory roof racks are not flat. they are curved. This means the outer edges of the basket are suspended in the air.
2: The spacing between them isn't "perfect" , so while the tubes of the basket will span one rung nicely, it rides higher on the other rung.
3: the default mounting jigger just doesn't fit well.

So what I'm looking at is a way to mount and unmount this rig "a lot" faster than i do it now. Right now I have a concoction of hockey pucks and bike tires to make spacers. Then i rig these u bolts around it, and its just messy.

I was sort of imagining two ideas.

1: Drill holes in my roof racks and use 4 bolts with wingnuts.

2: Put some sort of an l bracket on the back, so i can just slide it on, so i really only have to fasten the front..

Thoughts?

 

[rayra]

I'd be deleting the factory rack cross rails and fabricating some tabs that bolt to the underside of the aftermarket rack side rails and extend out and over the factory rack, and bolted to it. Making adjustments in teh tab design to level out the aftermarket rack. All that clutter goes away, and your projecting u-bolt wing-nuts won't be tearing up the bottom of whatever you put in that rack.