I spent a couple of hours on the roof mounts today. Or the base of the roof mounts I should say. They came out sturdy and pretty good. I designed them so they can use the original seals. Slow progress working on the mounts. At least I got the the base for all three mounts on the left side done and I cut out the pieces needed for the right side. I'll finish up the right side on Wednesday hopefully... and then do the actual mounting fixtures on Thursday/Friday so I can test the rack this weekend. Or at least that's the plan.
Here are some pictures.
Front/mid and rear base
Front left base
Left side. They came out very sturdy. Should easily handle the weight I'm going to put up on the rack.
LOL yep your absolutly right. She is the captain that is for sure.
Yeah you should pick up welding. It's not really that hard. I would recommend you look at youtube videos. Get yourself a welder and just go at it. I am by no means a pro at welding and my welds might not be the pretties once around. But they are strong and they do the job.
I just got a cheap 180amp welder from Harbour freight tools. Didnt have very high expectations but is actually pretty good. Maybe not as good as a welder in the $700-900 price range but it is good enough for the types of jobs that I will do. And as long as you have a 220V outlet and a 50amp breaker you will get all the juice you will ever need to melt thru thick steel plates.
So I spent a couple of more hours cutting and welding to get the mounts done. The 2 front mounts are welded together and the 2 rear are tacked up. I will do the 2 center mounts this afternoon and then clean them up and drill holes for the rack. They came out sturdy as heck and you would have to place an elephant up there to bend them.
Will hopefully have everything cleaned up and painted by this weekend and I will post some pictures then.
Yeah it hurts your eyes looking straight in to that thing
We stayed at one of the many campsites in Old NC 105 that you recommended. Really nice area. It had been raining a lot and in some parts the road was washed out pretty badly. It was very foggy and rainy but still nice.
I saw some of his pictures. Want to see more picture of me going thru the creek
A few friends from Expedition portal and I was out for a trip this weekend where I got to test the rack which worked just fine. It was a tight squeeze in some areas. And since the GX is rather high I slammed into pretty much every branch in the forrest so I am glad I built it sturdy to handle the abuse.
Light bars are the way to go. I used a relay and wired mine to the factory fog light on the tree and used a Toyota button for my fogs in the bumper. LOVE my light bar. Night to day bright!
Light bars are the way to go. I used a relay and wired mine to the factory fog light on the tree and used a Toyota button for my fogs in the bumper. LOVE my light bar. Night to day bright!