Homey-Made Roof Mounted Cargo Basket
Room for gear is hard to come by. It's a fact. Making room for muddy, cruddy stuff is even rougher. Before I got Woody, I had a Yakima BasketCase cargo basket on my truck's roof rack. We used it all the time for wet ropes, wetsuits, wet clothes - you know - stuff you wouldn't want to sleep with anywhere near you.
So - I started looking for a small roof rack to put on the space between the cabover and windshield on my truck, to offload some of these groady things to. I didnt find much. Smittybilt makes a "half sized" cargo basket thats 4' x 2', but that's still a little too big. I needed something in the 36" x 18" range. The Yakima BasketCase is made out of the same stuff grocery carts are made from. Certainly I can find something...
Redneck superpowers, activate! I found a 36" x 18" basket, made for those heavy duty steel shelving units they use in Walk-in coolers and such at a Kitchen Supply Place. Two problems, though: Chrome, and it had those rings at the edges that secure it to the steel uprights - a dead giveaway about what it was supposed to be. So, I broke out the trusty side grinder, and cut all 4 of those puppies off. I took it over to my neighbor's house, and I learned to weld using his wire feed Lincoln.
I tacked on 6 washers onto the bottom of the basket, to bolt to. I also welded some small bar stock where I had cut off the rings, to make it look better and reinforce the corners. Then I roughed up all of the chrome with a sander, and painted the whole thing with black bedliner. That looks much better!
At first, I was thinking about getting a roof rack to bolt my new basket to, but my size constraints made that difficult. Time to figure out something else. Try 1: (4) 3" suction cups from Amazon, with 1/4 - 20 nuts built in. I bolted 'er down, and put about a 15lb test load up there of old ropes that wouldn't hurt if I lost.
Nope. While they did stay sucked down, the wind pushed them backwards enough to touch my camper, and start trying to scratch up my junk. Not going to fly.
Try 2. While I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out what to do, this dude passes me with a bicycle attached to the back of his car with giant suction cups. What are those? Google-**** says: SeaSuckers. So I find the website, pick my jaw up off the floor after finding out how much they are (!) and send off for some. Bolt them on, and mount it up.
I'm in love.
These things are AWESOME SAUCE. The rack is now as perfect as it's going to be. I start to notice how many other places these would work, without drilling or damaging anything. You could mount Roto-Packs, Shovels, Jacks, etc. anywhere you have a flat, non textured surface. Either to the camper, or the side of the truck. Sweeeeet. More on the way...
http://www.seasucker.com/shop/4-12-seasucker-black/#tab-description
From the website the company claims they can handle 700lbs more than stock - do you know the exact weight of your camper these days? How have these held up in the long term? Also, whats up with the metal bracket on the front connecting the 1st and last leafs? Thanks for the advice! -Matt
