I did the southern leg of the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route this weekend with my new buddies Steve, Beth, Yves and Leslie. We had nifty trucks
and saw pretty sights
and a good time was had by all.
I had family responsibilities that required I bail early, and the others are still on the trail. When they're back, we'll probably have something more informative and better illustrated, but this little post is to show one of the XV-JP's roof rack setups that finally got implemented after being "in concept" for months.
A while back, I wrote about how, to save carrying extra weight, I bought a soft case, meant to carry a short rifle, and stocked it with the more hardcore trail stuff
so that I could easily leave these things behind when they weren't likely to be needed. For this WABDR trip, though, I figured (wrongly, BTW) that it'd be smart to take the stuff along.
The plan had been to lay the case across the Maxtraxs that were at the front of the rack
,
and the good news is that the plan worked pretty well.
The case nestled down nicely on the Maxtraxs in front of the Alu-box and it only took a ratchet strap to keep it held down tight,
and it was immune to the considerable number of overhead branches I dragged across the roof.
The strapping down was made easy by just adding a ring attachment to the L-track on each side of the rack
at the center axis of the case. FWIW, the L-track on the rack has proven
really handy and I highly recommend it as an addition to any suitable rack.
There was a small problem, though. Everyone who's worked on the project--John, James, Paul and myself--knew that at some weight, the pneumatic struts weren't going to pop up the roof. Turns out adding the heavy off-road case, located at this pretty-far-forward location, put it right at the borderline. The roof raised and lowered, but you could tell the system was overmatched. The struts themselves have the capacity, so I'll take a look at the air system and see if there's more air pressure to be had.
