By Tony K & Eric B
Driving a wagon usually means you have a rig full of gear and people which means there is a good chance you will have need of a roof rack. But unless you are extremely careful you put the rack at risk on frequent occaisions once you leave the pavement. This is really a problem here in the tree heavy Northwest where I live and wheel.
After getting one too many trees bound up in my roof rack I had to come up with a solution as I really didn’t like the idea of pulling my rack everytime I went wheeling. What I came up with is best described as Sliders, because most obstacles do manage to slide off them if they are not too big. While it may not be a good idea to lean the entire rig against a tree I have done it. Mind you it did manage to flex the rack mounts enough to push them into the sheetmetal of the roof. But I got to hand it to Yakima as the mount towers did not break and I can only imagine the damage to roof and raingutters without them.
All they are made of is some 1″ black iron pipe and six pipe couplings (one for each end of my Yakima crossbars) that have been machined to fit over the crossbar ends. I put the pipe into a bender to angle the ends so there is a leading and trailing edge that doesn’t catch on tree branches or trees for that matter.
I set the width so the sliders would stick out just a bit more than the knobs on the mounts. This would give them a bit of protection as well as some protection for the raingutters. All it took to set the width was to cut off the ends of the crossbars which stuck out way too far anyway. Left just enough to slip the sliders over the ends and drill a hole to insert a bolt.
While tree protection is the primary purpose of these things, they have come in very handy as a grab bar when loading the roof rack or for human counter weights that are standing on the sliders when the rig is in a tippy location. The one on the passenger side is also the location of a lockable steel mount I made to hold a shovel.
VERSION 2
With the Yakima rack setup on Lilly, I chose to add some rack sliders like Tony’s. I did not have some of the tools that Tony has, mainly the mil, but I did get creative with what I could do.
I did get some 1″ tubing, but instead of the sliders fitting over the existing bars, I chose to have them insert inside them. I was able to find some hitch pins that fit perfectly inside the Yakima bars, and the already had a hole drilled at the end. Once I figured out how much angle I wanted to bend the leading and trailing ends, I cut the hitch pins to fit against the tubing. I made sure that the distance between the Yakima bars still matched the trailers mounting, so when the tent goes back on the trailer I can still utilize the rack sliders. Once all welded together, test fitted and drilled the holes in the Yakima bars to match the pins, and then painted them.
Trying to figure out the right width of the rack was probably the most time consuming. I didn’t want it too narrow as to be tucked in under the tent and not protect anything, but not too wide as too look ridiculous. I believe I chose a happy medium, can always trim a bit more later.
Tony’s rack sliders not only aid in the protection of the rack against higher obstacles, but also serves as a strengthening component to the overall rack itself, and gives even the simplest of rack system setups a much more completed look.
