Flippac + kayak rack

[kevek01]

I haven't seen a dedicated thread to this subject yet (just bits here and there).

Has anyone successfully mounted a rack system to the top of a Flip Pac? I want to transport a kayak and/or surfboards on top. I contacted FPR yesterday and they said best place for the mounts are on the side (of the top portion) rather than straight through the top. I guess there is more reinforcement there? They wouldn't give me any more details than that.

Has anyone used an off the shelf mounting system to go on top of the FlipPac?
Any suggestions for installation? Picts?

 

[Ursa Minor]

Top vs. side

If you drill through the top, you perforate the coring material between the outside shell and the inner liner. The material used by F/P for coring is not good with water. To go through the top, overdrill it, refill with a filled resin mix and then redrill to size, in effect creating a bushing. The filled resin will help keep one from compressing the core with the rack fasteners and prevents leaks from migrating into the core surrounding the hole. It's the same approach used for mounting things to boat decks that are cored. (more articles via google searching about boat decks if you want pictures of the technique)

By drilling the sides you may hit the steel tube bonded front to back but it's just glass on the sides so there's less likelyhood of delaminating the core over time. That's probably why they recommend that approach.

cheers, John

 

[Martyn]

Agreed side mounting is better. We have a AT FlipPac in production that is getting a roof rack and the support brackets are going on the side.

The important point here is that the complete rack assembly needs to be removed before opening or closing the roof. The torsion bar is made to open the roof only, any additional weight even a few extra pounds is compounded due to the length of the roof and will overpower the torsion bar.

A roof with added load is difficult to open and close and will result in the eventual snapping of the torsion bar.

Thule has a nice tower and bar system that has a quick release on the towers, we will be using that set up on the AT FlipPac.

 

[kevek01]

OK. Great to know. So the steel tubing runs end to end...and I guess you can just drill right through to the interior and put some type of washer/load spreader on the side interior wall? I've looked at Thule's site and don't see a tower/feet that looks like they could mount laterally into the sidewall. Martyn which one are you guys using?

 

[Martyn]

I'm not so sure the steel bar runs all they way along. We'd initially thought about that but ended up having a reinforced plate added during building for the rack mounts.

A better option would be to mount to the vertical wall of the main shell rather than the lid.

We use the 430 Tracker II set up, you may do better using a gutter bracket and some of their 387 High Foot Packs. Go to the Thule site and look at their selection of feet