Curtis in Texas
Adventurer
My Rodeo Roof Rack
I was asked by some others to post up some info and pictures of my roof rack with folding light bar and folding kayak carrier. So here you go, maybe this will give you some ideas on how to make yours more garage friendly for you. Some of this I bought and some of it I made. It wasn’t that expensive considering!
Carrying capacity is somewhere in the 1000lb range, but I would hate to drive around it with it loaded with that much on it. The Yakama Cross bars are rated at 250 lbs each and there are 4 cross wise and two length wise.
Sorry, but these were taken in my shop today as it’s very cold here in Texas today.
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This rack has served us well for several years so you’ll notice that there is some rust and wear and tear on it in these pictures. And yes, this truck does fit inside a standard garage with a roll up door. But not like this.
It all folds down like this in seconds. Once you unload the roof rack of course!
Here’s how I manage to fold it down.
The first cross tube is a standard size Yakama Cross bar but the kayak and light bars are slightly bigger diameter, but they are shorter lengths and slip over the cross bar. The light bar is the longer of the two with the light mounting tabs welded to it and the kayak bar has two tubes that fit outside the light bar part.
I cross drilled the pin holes for the detent pins used to hold the kayak rack and light bar in the up or down position. The Detent Pins are Aircraft Grade quality and have never given me a minute’s problem. If you’ll notice the wind deflector and side rack strut are bolted together. These do not rotate with the other LB & Kayak tubes. They locate the rotating pins and keep them on alignment with the holes.
This is the locating pin for the light bar. Lift it up and the light bar can be laid back or raised. It locks in the down position to prevent it hitting the roof.
I made this piece out of a bolt with a Yakama plastic bolt head, one washer, a small compression spring and a short piece of square tubing and a drive pin through the bolt. Stuff I had laying around in my junk drawer.
Let’s talk about the air deflector.
The wind deflector is nothing more than a piece of aluminum from a cabinet door.
It’s held in place with the two straps you saw previously and two springs to keep them against the truck body so they don’t bounce. Here’s the retention springs. You can see the bottom lip is padded with a piece of split hose to keep the damage to the roof down. It works great and doesn’t break in cold weather like the plastic ones sold by the big named Companies.
I was asked by some others to post up some info and pictures of my roof rack with folding light bar and folding kayak carrier. So here you go, maybe this will give you some ideas on how to make yours more garage friendly for you. Some of this I bought and some of it I made. It wasn’t that expensive considering!
Carrying capacity is somewhere in the 1000lb range, but I would hate to drive around it with it loaded with that much on it. The Yakama Cross bars are rated at 250 lbs each and there are 4 cross wise and two length wise.
Sorry, but these were taken in my shop today as it’s very cold here in Texas today.
This rack has served us well for several years so you’ll notice that there is some rust and wear and tear on it in these pictures. And yes, this truck does fit inside a standard garage with a roll up door. But not like this.
It all folds down like this in seconds. Once you unload the roof rack of course!
Here’s how I manage to fold it down.
The first cross tube is a standard size Yakama Cross bar but the kayak and light bars are slightly bigger diameter, but they are shorter lengths and slip over the cross bar. The light bar is the longer of the two with the light mounting tabs welded to it and the kayak bar has two tubes that fit outside the light bar part.
I cross drilled the pin holes for the detent pins used to hold the kayak rack and light bar in the up or down position. The Detent Pins are Aircraft Grade quality and have never given me a minute’s problem. If you’ll notice the wind deflector and side rack strut are bolted together. These do not rotate with the other LB & Kayak tubes. They locate the rotating pins and keep them on alignment with the holes.
This is the locating pin for the light bar. Lift it up and the light bar can be laid back or raised. It locks in the down position to prevent it hitting the roof.
I made this piece out of a bolt with a Yakama plastic bolt head, one washer, a small compression spring and a short piece of square tubing and a drive pin through the bolt. Stuff I had laying around in my junk drawer.
Let’s talk about the air deflector.
The wind deflector is nothing more than a piece of aluminum from a cabinet door.
It’s held in place with the two straps you saw previously and two springs to keep them against the truck body so they don’t bounce. Here’s the retention springs. You can see the bottom lip is padded with a piece of split hose to keep the damage to the roof down. It works great and doesn’t break in cold weather like the plastic ones sold by the big named Companies.
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