Enthusiast III
I've been using an Apex roof basket on my jeep WK for about the past 6 months and i have no complaints about it other than the size. My spare tire is mounted up there and leaves little room for anything else. Ideally I would buy a Rhino Rack Pioneer or something similar but i cant justify the cost. What I've settled on is an idea to build a platform style rack out of unistrut and angle steel. This would give me a tremendous amount of flexibility in the ability to add tie down points anywhere along the rails and I would be able to build it to fit my vehicle without looking either too large or too small. There are two categories of equipment that i would need to mount; Full time gear, and part time gear. Full time gear includes my spare tire, hi-lift jack, and shovel. part time gear includes the 5lb propane cylinder, jerry cans, chain saw, camp chairs and a Gazelle T4.
Has anyone designed or built a unistrut roof rack? I'm looking for input from the community. I was considering removing the factory cross bars parallel roof rails and installing short 8-10" Sections of 1 5/8" square unistrut to mount the entire rack to. but building the cross rails of the rack itself from 1 5/8"w by 13/16"h sections. Ideally they would be spaced approx 8-10" on center and run perpendicular to the vehicle. Would the 13/16" unistrut hold the weight? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Has anyone designed or built a unistrut roof rack? I'm looking for input from the community. I was considering removing the factory cross bars parallel roof rails and installing short 8-10" Sections of 1 5/8" square unistrut to mount the entire rack to. but building the cross rails of the rack itself from 1 5/8"w by 13/16"h sections. Ideally they would be spaced approx 8-10" on center and run perpendicular to the vehicle. Would the 13/16" unistrut hold the weight? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
