Mounting RTT to stock LX (1 Viewer)

[jayxr]

Hello, have any of you mounted a large roof top tent to the stock crossbars on an earlier LX570? Specifically, I am looking to mount a James Baroud xxl, which is quite long. The LX570 has shorter factory rails compared to the LC, which makes me a bit nervous. I currently have four factory crossbars mounted.
The LX has 62" of support with 35" of crossbar space centered between those mounting points, and I approximate about 40" of the tent would be unsupported in the front. With LC rails, it appears to add an additional 28" of support with 18" of crossbar space. The LX rails appear to sit higher, which will make it much easier to mount hardware. The LC rails look much lower.
I am hoping to avoid purchasing an aftermarket rack if at all possible. Prinsu and Victory quoted up to three weeks before shipping, which does not work with my timeline. Any other alternative would be either more costly or suboptimal for my use.
Thank you in advance.

 

[grinchy]

What year Lx are you taking about? I assume a 2015 or earlier. The 2016+ has a different rail system and the refit is more involved (drop the headliner).
The Lx has the same roof as a TLC, so you can run the tlc feet and rails. Note that the tlc crossbars are different width and the crossbars are not interchangeable.

There are four mounting pads per side. I believe the lx uses 2 and 4, and the tlc 1, 3, and 4.

If you do start to unbolt your pads, there are clips that act as the ‘nut’ above the roof liner. To keep the clips from detaching and spinning or dropping you need to loosen the bolts two turns or so each bolt, so they are both engaged until they both aren’t.

I bought a tlc rack from a builder and put it on my LX. Many others have as well.

 

[jayxr]

What year Lx are you taking about? I assume a 2015 or earlier. The 2016+ has a different rail system and the refit is more involved (drop the headliner).
The Lx has the same roof as a TLC, so you can run the tlc feet and rails. Note that the tlc crossbars are different width and the crossbars are not interchangeable.

There are four mounting pads per side. I believe the lx uses 2 and 4, and the tlc 1, 3, and 4.

If you do start to unbolt your pads, there are clips that act as the ‘nut’ above the roof liner. To keep the clips from detaching and spinning or dropping you need to loosen the bolts two turns or so each bolt, so they are both engaged until they both aren’t.

I bought a tlc rack from a builder and put it on my LX. Many others have as well.

I have a 2008 LX. Thank you for your thoughtful response.
I modified some stock LX470 crossbars to fit my LX, and it sounds like they may have worked on an LC unmodified. I cut about 1.5" off of them, and they work perfectly.
Thank you for the heads up on the pad retainers. I'm not sure I understand the method you describe, because I don't quite know what it looks like, but I'm sure with a bit more digging I can figure that out.
Did you notice less clearance between the crossbars and the roof when you did the swap? The clearance afforded by the LX appears to give me room to bolt the Baroud without modifying the mount, and I'm not sure about the LC.

 

[jl199986]

I mounted a TopOak hard shell (great tent btw..and cheap) to my factory 2021 HE rack/ bars all summer. Once mounted it was fine. Maybe a bit more flex than I’d like when off-road… that’s mostly from the tent being much longer than the cross bars positioned all the way forward and back on the factory rails. Only allows them to be at ~ the 1/3 & 2/3 of the tent length. Occasionally off-road with a big bump I could tell it was a bit much for the factory setup with some creaks here and there flexing the plastic ends.

However the big pain was the mounting clearance. To get far enough under it to the crossbars, and then fit hands and wrench under the crossbars for the far bolt was a real pain. I was literally turning bolts one ratchet click worth at a time. One cannot access from the sides. But…. Nice and low profile though.

I’ve now gone with an ARB base rack, but that just went on, so no RTT mounted yet. I suspect it will be much easier because the rack is much longer and I’ll be able to mount it on crossmembers much closer to front and back, but still have it resting on middle crossmembers too.

The tradeoff between low profile and easier to mount is a tough balance. I also think we’re near the dynamic limit with just the factory crossmembers…. rails are better, but I can tell this ARB is a whole other level of capacity.

 

[jl199986]

TopOak on Factory LC rack.

Side view factory rack

ARB Base Rack- long.

 

[jl199986]

Here is a better shot. Yellow marks about where the cross bars were. The LC rails have a good length of plastic cover at the front and back to which the cross member can’t be placed.

While stable “enough”, the front was a bit more cantilevered than I liked, particularly off-road. And the crossbars themselves the weakest link. If the LX is the shorter Lexus factory rack that’s an additional consideration. FWIW I got my ARB from Slee in about 10 days.

 

[jl199986]

Last note- when installing the ARB, or rather removing the factory rack, 3 of the 8 nut retainers inside the headliner looked like they wanted to fall, luckily these forums warned me. I carefully undid the bolts and used four (one per bracket) M8 bolts I’d cut the heads off of as my (threaded rod) trick to assure not dropping the retainers. I would not recommend just relying on finesse. Not that I’ve had luck with that anywhere in my life anyway.

 

[coleAK]

I used an iKamper mini on the OEM rails but with Yakima crossbars on my 2013 LX570. Later I switched to LC rails with the same Yakima round crossbars.

I went to the LC rails to give a better platform (longer crossbar spread) for the RTT and my 16’ canoe.

Here are some pictures if the current LC rains and 6 or 7 years ago with the LX rails.

 

[NYC570]

Hello, have any of you mounted a large roof top tent to the stock crossbars on an earlier LX570? Specifically, I am looking to mount a James Baroud xxl, which is quite long. The LX570 has shorter factory rails compared to the LC, which makes me a bit nervous. I currently have four factory crossbars mounted.
The LX has 62" of support with 35" of crossbar space centered between those mounting points, and I approximate about 40" of the tent would be unsupported in the front. With LC rails, it appears to add an additional 28" of support with 18" of crossbar space. The LX rails appear to sit higher, which will make it much easier to mount hardware. The LC rails look much lower.
I am hoping to avoid purchasing an aftermarket rack if at all possible. Prinsu and Victory quoted up to three weeks before shipping, which does not work with my timeline. Any other alternative would be either more costly or suboptimal for my use.
Thank you in advance.

How heavy is your tent. I believe the stock rack is only rated for around 150lbs. You mentioned that you have four crossbars. These won't be flat because of the curvature of the side rails so it might affect the mounting of the RTT.

 

[TeCKis300]

Unfortunately the stock LX rack won't work for the Baroud XXL. Tent is too long with too much overhang for the short front to back span of the LX rack. There will be too much deflection and bouncing of the leading edge of the tent at freeway speeds from the long overhang.

Many of us LX owners swapped to the longer 3 leg per side rail LC rack. This does work great for heavier tents and is stable with 4 OEM cross bars.

There still some complexity as height is limited so I had to modify my iKamper brackets. Not sure of the Baround brackets. Also the cross bars aren't on the same plane so I added 3D printed spacers on the furthest out cross bars. It does work great even running across the desert Baja style.

View attachment 3138062

There is some complexity here that I need to finish sorting out.

1) The iKamper Skycamp bracket 3.0s are too tall and will contact the roofline as is. They are about 2.375" and there's only about 2.25" clearance from the top of the stock cross bars to the roofline. I modified the brackets by bending the lower part to reduce height to ~1.75".

View attachment 3138057

2) The OEM siderails have a bow, so when using more than 2 crossbars, they're not on the same plane, so need spacers. I made some 3D printed plastic spacers.

 

[eatSleepWoof]

Get rid of the OEM rails and pick up a set of Rhino Rack Vortex cross bars at virtually any auto-outdoors shop in town. No wait, and IMO one of the best solutions for securely mounting a RTT. This was my setup.

 

[coleAK]

Get rid of the OEM rails and pick up a set of Rhino Rack Vortex cross bars at virtually any auto-outdoors shop in town. No wait, and IMO one of the best solutions for securely mounting a RTT. This was my setup.

That is a pretty sweet set up. I’ve considered ditching my rails all together and doing the same thing.

 

[jayxr]

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses. I picked up a set of factory LC rails from a member on the forum, and for now this is plan A. I'm thinking about the Rhino Rack Vortex solution, but the cost is approaching a roof rack.
I'm also toying with the idea of picking up a Sherpa rack, as it can be had quickly and appears to be high quality, but the cost is high.
So, I have a solution, but I still may optimize.
The tent I am picking up is 13" tall, and I have about 18" of clearance at the lowest point in my garage from my roof, this is with AHC low, leaving me approximately 5". This is another variable. It's going to be close, but with thoughtful mounting I should be good.