After reading all the threads, I decided to tackle my roof rack removal today as I'm buying a Baja Expedition rack shortly and just purchased a Tepui RTT. Thought I'd share my experience and offer some tips for others who are thinking of doing it.
My biggest tip: If you've been putting this off, wait for a dry couple of days and DO IT (or have someone do it who knows how). You'll see in my pics that although my '97 has 155k miles on it and has lived in California its who life, there is still some rust bubbles around the nutserts. I feel like the longer you wait the uglier it's going to be under there once you take the rack off.
I got lucky that none of my nutserts spun, but I also believe that this can be avoided with the proper prep beforehand
Here's my writeup:
1) liberally spray PB Blaster around the heads of the 8 screws at least 2 days before you attempt this. I only did it the night before and the day of and I think it would have been easier if I had done more. Along with spraying PB Blaster I also lightly tapped the heads of the screws with a hammer and a punch to try and loosen things up.
2) Get the correct sized screw driver. Depending on how stuck things are, you're going to have apply a fair amount of torque to these things and they'll obviously strip with the wrong screwdriver bit.
3) go SLOWWWW turning these things. If you try and muscle them off you're going to strip a head or spin a nutsert. Slow and steady with even torque. If it's not budging, apply more PB blaster, tap with the hammer and punch a bit more, come back to it.
4) After a few rounds of PB Blaster and tapping, I had all coming loose except for one. It was so stuck that I was starting to strip the screw head. I have an electric impact driver that saved my butt here. Got the correct phillips bit in it and started slow, spun it right out without disrupting the nutsert. Disclaimer: I may have been lucky here. I'm sure that it could have just as easily broken the nutsert loose.
5) After an hour or so of battling the screws, I had all 8 out without any spinning nutserts and was lifting the rack off. After some cleaning, this is what I have underneath:
As you can see, there is a bit of rust bubbling around the nutserts. I was really hoping not to find this as I have zero experience with rust or paint repair. For now, I've cleaned the area up and installed some new bolts with hard rubber washers from the plumbing section of my local hardware store. It's a pretty temporary solution to get me through the next couple days of rain:
What do you guys think is my best method for dealing with the rust? Can I just sand it down to the metal, spray some primer and white paint and get some rubber washers with sealant?
Do my nutserts look good enough condition to keep them there?
As a final summary: I feel for you guys in the rust belt, but I think the longer you can prep these things with PB Blaster and some light tapping before you start the project, the less likely you are to have nutserts spinning on you.
My biggest tip: If you've been putting this off, wait for a dry couple of days and DO IT (or have someone do it who knows how). You'll see in my pics that although my '97 has 155k miles on it and has lived in California its who life, there is still some rust bubbles around the nutserts. I feel like the longer you wait the uglier it's going to be under there once you take the rack off.
I got lucky that none of my nutserts spun, but I also believe that this can be avoided with the proper prep beforehand
Here's my writeup:
1) liberally spray PB Blaster around the heads of the 8 screws at least 2 days before you attempt this. I only did it the night before and the day of and I think it would have been easier if I had done more. Along with spraying PB Blaster I also lightly tapped the heads of the screws with a hammer and a punch to try and loosen things up.
2) Get the correct sized screw driver. Depending on how stuck things are, you're going to have apply a fair amount of torque to these things and they'll obviously strip with the wrong screwdriver bit.
3) go SLOWWWW turning these things. If you try and muscle them off you're going to strip a head or spin a nutsert. Slow and steady with even torque. If it's not budging, apply more PB blaster, tap with the hammer and punch a bit more, come back to it.
4) After a few rounds of PB Blaster and tapping, I had all coming loose except for one. It was so stuck that I was starting to strip the screw head. I have an electric impact driver that saved my butt here. Got the correct phillips bit in it and started slow, spun it right out without disrupting the nutsert. Disclaimer: I may have been lucky here. I'm sure that it could have just as easily broken the nutsert loose.
5) After an hour or so of battling the screws, I had all 8 out without any spinning nutserts and was lifting the rack off. After some cleaning, this is what I have underneath:
As you can see, there is a bit of rust bubbling around the nutserts. I was really hoping not to find this as I have zero experience with rust or paint repair. For now, I've cleaned the area up and installed some new bolts with hard rubber washers from the plumbing section of my local hardware store. It's a pretty temporary solution to get me through the next couple days of rain:
What do you guys think is my best method for dealing with the rust? Can I just sand it down to the metal, spray some primer and white paint and get some rubber washers with sealant?
Do my nutserts look good enough condition to keep them there?
As a final summary: I feel for you guys in the rust belt, but I think the longer you can prep these things with PB Blaster and some light tapping before you start the project, the less likely you are to have nutserts spinning on you.
