Fitting a rack to the roof.

[Dereckerick]

Hi All,

I need a roof rck on top of the van (Auto Trail Cheyyene 696) so that I can fit Link Removed

I want to make some box sections (in the shape of a roof rack) with flat plates on the bottoms, so that there is a wider surface area to glue/screw them down, how would they be fitted in the real world.

What are the other options?

18ft sea kayak, if it goes inside the misus is gonna kill me.

Many Thanks

 

[Geo]

You are on the right track with spreader plates for the out side, given the normal construction of roofs, internal spreader plates and anti crush tubes will most likely be reqd, a proper survey of the vehicle would be reqd before this work is undertaken, including the question is this type of roof suitable for the loads and stresses you intend to apply to it, whilst the Kayaks in them selfs are not that heavy the transferd load to the roof by the mechanism could well amount to 3,or 4 times that weight pulling on the fibre glass roof as you winch uo, causing roof to wall separation on the opposite side of the vehicle
Geo

 

[Terry]

Hi you will have to find the cross members on the roof :thumb: to glue and self tap into (use tec screws/bolts) It may well be worth buying a 1.5 mm ali sheet to stick on the roof :thumb: this would give extra strength for walking on and fixing the rack to.
As part of my build we stuck one on the top of ours to cover over where the ambulance sky lights were (wrong place) it did not need it just looked a lot better than patches :thumb:Also no problem with 2 of us on the roof combined weight of 34 stone plus whatever is in the roof box (spare wheel, jack chairs dog food etc
terry