I figured I'd put in an update since the cage is mostly welded in place on my vehicle now. It will be coming off tomorrow, at which point I'll get it galvanized, and then I'll probably Line-X it. I'm also getting my bull bar galvanized and Line-X'd, and getting a new-to-me bulkhead galvanized as well. I generally don't keep the bull bar on the vehicle, but it's good to have in case I do a long trip across moose country or something like that.
Here's how the cage looked when we laid it all out:
When the fabricator got it on the truck, the part of the rack in front of the centre hoop wasn't bent to be in line with the part at the back. See the white rod on top for an explanation. It also meant that the middle bar at the front couldn't fit in place.
After some consideration, he decided the best solution was to take the top bars off the front, and re-bend them. He managed to do this, and fix the middle bar as well. I don't know yet whether he was able to re-use the middle bar or had to make a new one.
As you can see in the next photo, the rod now rests on the cage all the way to the bend. It also follows the shape of the vehicle properly. Much better overall.
I might end up putting another bar across in between the front and the middle one, right where the bend is. This would serve as a brace for the floor of the roof rack at the front. I have an X-shaped cross brace going in the box above the load space. It's just not in yet in the photo.
Finally, here's a photo of how it looks so far. This is before the fabricator re-bent the pipes, but it looks about the same overall.
Overall, I've been happy with Whitbread. There have been some challenges, but so far it's been a positive experience. Here are some of my thoughts so far:
1. They forgot to include the instructions in the package, but they emailed it to me right away when we discovered this.
2. Other than the easy-to-email instructions, nothing was missing, which was a relief.
3. OK, actually they were supposed to weld some small risers on the top to act as sides for a simple roof-rack, and they forgot. However, they promptly refunded me my £60, and it's better to get that done locally anyway as it's easier to do the back-and-forth with the local fabricator and get exactly what I want.
4. The fabricator is a little iffy on how the cage is attached to the frame. On the other hand, it seems to work in practice, and he might end up beefing things up a bit there if he has any bright ideas.
5. It seems like the messed up the bends on those three pipes. I think that's odd as they should have been done in a jig, but hey, mistakes happen. I emailed them about this morning but haven't heard anything back since it's the weekend. On the plus side, the fabricator was able to resolve this locally without a lot of extra effort, so it could be worse.
I'd buy from Whitbread again. Getting something like this from the UK can end up being a real nightmare if you've paid for something and can't get it to work. In the end, the fact that it got put together with only a minimum of problems seems like a good outcome.
