Rooftop Tent Question

[TinyTimmay]

Greetings OB members!

My first post and why not start a thread at the same time? haha

I'm from eastern North Dakota and have grown up car camping, hiking and mountain biking. The last few years I've discovered dispersed camping and have put together a decent setup for "Overlanding".

My brother in law recently bought an iKamper RTT and wanted to use it on his Honda Pilot. He already had a roof rack system in place, but it was clip style and not a more permanent mount. Through some research, and after discussing with a roof rack system company near Minneapolis MN, he decided to get a new roof rack (Yakima) and have it permanently installed at said roof rack company. He told me that he was advised to NOT use a clip style roof rack system when attaching an RTT to it. Has anyone else heard this before?

My current setup is a 2017 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited, Yakima roof rack (clip style) and a Smittybilt Overlander RTT. I'm on my 3rd season of using this setup and love it! However, I'm curious from a safety standpoint if anyone else has heard the thing about avoiding clip style roof racks when mounting RTTs to them?

Thanks in advance!

 

[OTH Overland]

Most important factor with roof racks is attempting to determine what the actual load rating of the particular rack is. There are three main things needed to determine, Static Load Rating: How much weight will the rack support when parked, i.e. camped and you and all your gear is up there sleeping. Dynamic Load Rating: How much weight is the rack good for when traveling down the road. Needs to be greater than the weight of the tent, what's stored inside, and the rack itself. Then does the rack manufacture apply an 'off highway' dynamic load reduction, where the amount is reduced to account for vibration and impact. Among all this you need to look for the lowest common denominators of the system, mounting method, capacity of the chosen load bars, etc. and finally what does the vehicle manufacture give for allowable roof loads. The world's strongest rack does not do any good if attached to a weak gutter, or factory roof rails that are fastened to the vehicle with sheet metal fasteners. Our Jeep Wrangler has fiberglass top with built in gutters, not something I would put my trust in mounting anything to, however the gutter can be a very strong point on some vehicles, and there are racks that use that mounting point to their advantage. When shopping ask to see some written values for the rack and mounting system limits, and also know how much real weight you will be carrying up there. most tent manufactures exclude their mounting hardware, ladder and accessories from the listed weight of the tent, then add in some bedding and the weight of the rack itself and you would be surprised how much you have up there.