pete.wilson said:
Outstanding build and thanks for all of the photo's. Could you take a couple of pics showing how the awning is attached to the rack and how it opens up. I like how there is no outboard poles or guide wires. I'm thinking of how it would be to fab one (support structure) myself and attach it to my wilderness rack on my WJ. Thanks.
The awning puts a lot of stress on the roof rack's sides, but so far haven't had any problems at all. The awning comes with clamps for their roof rack's base -- a 2" square tube I think. My father-in-law cut them off with a band saw, and this is what's left:
Since the awning is a bit longer than the _flat_ surface of the roof rack's sides, I had to extend the flat side of the awning mounts inwards a bit. The raw aluminum pieces you see above were bolted to the mounts:
Then the flat pieces were drilled and some backing plate used to 'sandwich' the roof rack sides:
I already removed the awning for the winter, so I can't show you a detailed shot of the mount ON the roof rack, but here's one of the backside with the mount assembled.
Here are a few shots from this past summer...
js.