Roof rack removal gurus: advice needed

[HeadacheManNYC]

I was hoping to avoid posting about this tired subject, but it has come to that.

When I bought my 80 about a month ago, I had my mechanic pull the rack off while changing the fluids etc. Long story short, what I ended up with is a urethane farm on my roof and a small intermittent leak from one of the rear passenger side holes.
I thought I'd try and clean things up a bit and bought roof plugs from volvo thinking the nutserts had been pulled, but found after scraping away the urethane that they're still in there with some kind of plug in them (the top part broke off with the urethane) My dilemma is what to do now. I'm a caveman when it comes to body stuff, and don't know how difficult it'll be to get the nutserts out with plugs stuck in there.

Is it possible to just put POR15 putty in the nutserts? I'm hoping I can do this cheaply and easily with it still looking decent, but not sure thats possible at this point.

Also, is there any adhesive remover I can safely use on what's left of the paint to get the remaining urethane off?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Tyler93]

Yuck. I'm looking forward to a good solution for this. Best of luck to you because it could benefit me!

 

[Michael Hanson]

bolts with rubber washers. Mike

 

[Rwhat]

I kept the nutserts in place and used new stainless steel allen head bolts to thread into the serts. I then covered them with clear silicone caulking.

 

[bsupak]

I drilled them till they fell through to the headliner, dented in around the holes and fiberglassed over them. But then again, I painted my entire roof afterwards.

Bryan

 

[93Chewbacca]

Maybe you could get some stainless steel round head bolts and silicone them in...

 

[HeadacheManNYC]

I may try some low profile stainless bolts, just wondering if the residual plugs in the nutserts will make it difficult. Anybody for putty-ing the nutserts?

 

[VCCruzr]

I hit the nutserts with a grinder, filled the holes with 2 coats of bondo, then finished off with Al's liner. I didn't want to match the paint plus I had left over liner from my drawer project.
https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/472071-als-liner-roof-rack-patch.html

 

[darwink1]

I had a lot of rust around my roof rack so I drilled out the nutserts then ground down the "lip" and the rust. To plug the holes I glued in some snug fitting plastic plugs from the parts store then used bed liner to cover the patches. Color matched paint over the liner. No leaks at all.

D