Maggiolina Roof Tent mounting on Expo Rack (1 Viewer)

[riffman12]

so I was hoping to get the combined wisdom of the Mud community to here to help me figure something out.

I have a rack from Trail Tailor that I love. As you can see, it has the kind of expo style basket in the front.

I just bought a lightly used Small Maggiolina Extreme hard shell tent that I'd like to mount on it. Here it is:

However, the top shell on the tent is sliiightly too wide to fit the basket on the front of my rack. But the bottom shell fits just fine. Here, I even drew a professional diagram.

Looking from front of vehicle:

The red circles are basically where the two mounting rails are for the tent. I only need about 1.5" of lift from the base of the rack so what I'm thinking is find something that runs the length of the mounting rail like a 2x2 block of plastic that is long enough.

My questions are:

1) Has anyone encountered this and raised up one of these tents like I'm trying to do?

2) If I do raise the tent up, should I do so under the metal mounting rails of the tent? I'm kind of worried about all the weight resting on those two skinny rails...

3) Any ideas on what I could put in there as a spacer?

4) Any other ideas?

 

[Fj81]

2x4s are cheap and would actually be about the 1.5 inch thickness you need. Just use a few pieces lengthwise to hlep spread the weight, some crossways, that would require less material.

 

[riffman12]

Ah forgot to update this thread

Last weekend I chopped the top bars off my rack, grinded, sanded, painted. Then cut lengths of garden hose to pad the tent against the rack. It fits like a glove!

 

[Fj81]

Ah forgot to update this thread

Last weekend I chopped the top bars off my rack, grinded, sanded, painted. Then cut lengths of garden hose to pad the tent against the rack. It fits like a glove!

Even gooder!