Attaching awning to factory roof rails (1 Viewer)

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Gillingham, England
Hi all,

I have a 2.5m long awning and I want to attach it to the factory roof rails. Any ideas/suggestions? Not keen to spend a lot of money to buy 3 cross rails unless there is a way I can do it cheaply such as self fabrication or replacing entire system? Keeping cost down is key. Roof tent will be going up soon, so will need 2 cross rails at least. Buying another 2 pack to just use 1 of them seems prohibitive.

TIA!
 
Hi all,

I have a 2.5m long awning and I want to attach it to the factory roof rails. Any ideas/suggestions? Not keen to spend a lot of money to buy 3 cross rails unless there is a way I can do it cheaply such as self fabrication or replacing entire system? Keeping cost down is key. Roof tent will be going up soon, so will need 2 cross rails at least. Buying another 2 pack to just use 1 of them seems prohibitive.

TIA!
I believe Rago Fabrication makes awning brackets for the GX OEM rack and they are very reasonably priced.
 
Thank you for the link. I have seen the Prado 120 series is the equivalent of the GX470. I'll have a browse and see if I can find what you're referring to!

Just go to Rago Fabrication and either click the GX 470 tab or search for Awning Brackets and find the GX 470. I could be wrong but I think it's the same as the same vintage 4Runner. You can also call. They are great to work with and often you talk to an owner.
 
Coincidentally i was just tagged in the 100 series thread about this since i did something pretty cool and inexpensive. What i loved best about this setup (aside from being really inexpensive) was the fact that it hugged my roof rail perfectly and allowed me to park in my garage...roof clearance was crucial and this basicallly allowed me to run awning with zero change to my overall roof clearance.

I bought two of the arb big L brackets and cut off the ''base'' , leaving just the plate that has the 3 slotted holes. I then used much longer bolts that slid into the awning backing channels, and then used the slotted plates to sandwich the oem roof rails. so basically the awning backing was pressed up against the roof rails, then the arb hacked up plate was installed and then washers and nylock nuts to tighten it down so it stays put.

****, i just realized this post is useless without photos. Anyway...it worked great and cost 20 dollars in arb brackets and 5 dollars in home depot bolts and nuts.


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Just dug up some old photos to show how tight it fit as well as the backside of what i did with the ARB plates.
Hmmm not sure how I've never seen this thread.

I have mounted the 2500 a couple different ways. currently i'm using two plates and longer bolts to ''sandwich'' the stock roof rail. This works perfect for me since I park my truck in my garage and need every centimeter of clearance I can get. I also currently do not need an aftermarket roof rack and cant justify the money to simply mount my awning.

here is a clean shot of how I've mounted it. I basically took two arb awning brackets that I had laying around and hacked off the side with the 3 holes. I used those as my plates. zero noises or rattles.


The second photo below (stock bumpers) is back when I simply used the arb brackets and drilled the factory crossbars, and used home depot hardware to mount it with large thick washers to help distribute the load. I was always concerned about this method not holding up (ie the thin cross bars ripping and my awning falling off).


Third photo is an old one, but shows the current mounting set up. sits very tight to the roof which is great, but still leaves plenty of room to unzip and pull out (that's what she said)

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I have had the Rago Fabrication brackets installed for a while now, they are nice brackets that work well. However, be warned that when I purchased the kit the hardware they provided was crap, the captured nuts that slide into the channel on the rack had to be ground down to fit. Rago was less than helpful when I pointed out this problem.
 

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