LR4 and Prospeed...

[harbinger808]

Aloha everyone,
I'll start by saying that our 2012 LR4 has been great to us and we hope that it will last our young family many years to come and bring us adventured filled memories. With that said, one of the very first upgrades we made to the LR was a Prospeed RR. I went this route after many a nite looking at websites and the various forums. I choose the PS RR simply because it was the most low profile rack out there and to be quite honest it looks the best IMO.

Now comes the headaches We purchased an Alucab ShadowAwning at ExpoWest and have been looking for a Fab shop to help "install" this to the rack. After several meetings and all either being too expensive or unwilling to take the task, my brother in-law offered his assistance. Keep in mind we aren't engineers or fabricators but he does have welding skills and I can design anything on a napkin... doesn't mean it will work though. We decided to just buy some 1" steel tube and go for it. Here are some pics of the process yesterday afternoon.

The next problem was mounting the Howlingmoon 1.6 Stargazer PS is out of stock on their RTT mounting system and the cost plus shipping was something that I didn't want to deal with this time around. I love their stuff but the exchange rates not that great now. We are "fabricating" as I write this and I'll post pics in a few.

Hindsight... maybe I should have just bought that damn Frontrunner or Rhino, but at least I'll have a unique LR4

 

[unseenone]

Pretty sweet, Kind of want one.. Nice work so far. It would be nice if it was removable...

 

[harbinger808]

Pretty sweet, Kind of want one.. Nice work so far. It would be nice if it was removable...

We thought we could just use the existing Prospeed awning brackets up front as we laid them out in the pics and figure out a stout enough hinge in the rear so the whole thing could fold flat when not in use, but after thinking about and looking up ideas on the web we decided to just make it a fixed mount. I can take the entire awning off but that rear "tower" that we welded up will still be there.
Maybe if someone on the forum with WAY more engineering prowess can point us in the right direction for a hinge that can support the awning rear... we may just have to start all over again. My wife and I know that we don't want the RTT up there full time as this is our only vehicle. So we made some brackets that allows us to take the tent off. It's definitely overkill, but as I stated, we aren't engineers so we figured the stouter the better

 

[harbinger808]

So here's the rest of what we came up with. We had a weekend to build all this and if we actually had more time we could have made these tent brakets a bit more low profile using 1" tubing instead of 1 1/4" but we like and it works I realized I didnt take any photos of the RTT attachment. W
What we did was use 1 1/4" OD steel tube and cut it to the length we needed and on both ends, we tack welded 5/8-18 threaded inserts. These became the poles that attach to the underside of the RTT. We wanted to use a smaller thread profile but the place we went to only had those and this was the only weekend my brother in law could help for awhile. The poles line up with the tabs that we welded on the frame and they just screw right in. Not as trick and fancy as the Prospeed setup but it does that same thing. I'll try it out for a while and see how I like the overall height of the tent in relation to the roof rack. With smaller tubing we could lower it by about another 1 1/2".
I figure just leave it alone and start camping with the family.

 

[latarheel]

Any LR3/4 Prospeed owners have a better solution for the wind fairing Velcro attachment s? In the Phoenix heat , these just dissolve and flap around at speed so looking for another solution


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[sunrisehiker]

I was told by Ben from Prospeed that velcro is not a primary attachment point but only to aid an installation process and keep the cowl in place before attaching to roof rack with screws. After five years of parking on the street, mine started to flap all the way through road trip to west Coast and back to NJ and when I came back I just ordered a new roll of self adhesive velcro and re attached it back to cowl and rack. Will last me another 5 years or so.

 

[HillbillyfromAL]

I like that roof mount I’m still trying to decide how I want to set mine up.


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