Aternative to rain gutter roof rack?

[Sloan]

I was driving by the NBC studios here in Burbank yesterday and while waiting for a light was checking out their newsvans. Those things carry a ton of weight on the roof and they have these platforms that have roughly 8" feet that are mounted into the roof rather than supporting the weight on the raingutter. It would be a PITA to do the install but you would probably end up with better load carrying capacity.

 

[Sloan]

I thought these guys might have something www.americanvan.com

 

[Expedition Pictures]

Two of the main companies that customize those ENG vans are Frontline and Wolf Coach.

http://www.frontlinecomm.com/
http://www.l-3com.com/wolfcoach/

I'm guessing this is what you saw:

I work for a station here in Denver and we use the Frontline vans like above. We also have Quigley 4x4 conversions done on them.

 

[Sloan]

That's it, I drove by NBC this morning camera in hand and of course, no vans.

 

[Expedition Pictures]

If you'd like, I can take some detailed photos of the ones at work. Our vans have the same roof rack setup.

 

[Sloan]

That would be cool, thank you.

 

[Expedition Pictures]

Here are those pix of that roof rack:

 

[Expedition Pictures]

This is Frontline's ENG-350 ST. It's a modified Ford E-350 cargo van with what they call a "full length roof platform". I have a feeling that the platform is custom made by Frontline and not available as a separate item, I could be wrong.

The platform doesn't really hold anything other than the 2-way radio and cell antennas.

The box looking thing in the front is an air conditioning unit that's mounted to the roof. In the back is a 56 foot pneumatic mast that goes through the roof and is mounted to the floor.

It makes for a good place to shoot from, although I think we are not allowed up there due to OSHA rules. In the winter time the mast can freeze up during snowstorms so we have to climb up there and coax it down.

Hope that helps.

 

[madizell]

I appears that the feet of the rack are both riveted and welded to the roof sheet metal. If there are doublers on the inside to hold the rivets, it would seem to me that this would work for about any vehicle, as long as you were willing to weld on to the roof and repaint the vehicle.