Roof Rack Bracket Help

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Lassen

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Hey, all! I need some assistance to either find something I can't or maybe make something custom for mounting my cargo rack to the top of my car.

I have a 2006 Jeep GC with the factory installed rack. It looks like:



Sadly, the design of the rack only allows cross members to be spaced no more than 36" apart. As a result, this limits the size rack I would want to put on there. Therefore, the rack must go.

In looking around, I can't seem to find anything that would work with the existing mounting points with the exception of the Gobi rack.



While this rack looks great, at $1,600, it is way more expensive than I want to spend. However, the brackets to mount it are perfect. I contacted Gobi and they don't sell these separately.

I checked out Yakima and Thule as well. The only thing I could find is a Yakima landing pad as they call them. The hole spacing is 4" just as the holes at each of the mounting points under my OEM rack. Great! But they are made of plastic and that just seems a bit lightweight.



Does anyone have any suggestions for me as to what to look for or try? I would be willing to put some time effort and money to get this right. To me, the attachment points for a roof rack are in some ways maybe more important than the rack itself. I have a Rola rack now. It works, but it is a two piece unit. As I'd like to get a larger rack in the future, I am leaning toward something streamlined so I can leave the rack in the roof nearly all time to get away at short notice. Ultimately I'd like the rack to be able to hold a good deal of weight, so the feet have to be done right.

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?
 

4xFar Adventures

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What's the load capacity of the factory rails? The feet are important, but the overall load rating of the rails is probably more important. It might only be 150 lbs.
 
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Lassen

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What's the load capacity of the factory rails? The feet are important, but the overall load rating of the rails is probably more important. It might only be 150 lbs.
Factory rail load rating is 150. That's another reason for my wanting to remove them and connect directly to the roof attachment points. Using roof attach points allows for a 420 pound max load, probably static load. I'm looking to have load range in 200-250 pounds on the roof rack.
 
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Corbet

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I used the Yakima Landing pads on our Impreza. They are made of a composite material and are probably much more stout than you think.