Thread: Roof rack loading

That's the conventional wisdom.

Interestingly I've bought some Rola racks recently. While they state on the one hand they exceed the Design Stds in this area, on the other they say to drop your roof loads significantly for corrugations, to avoid roof damage. I'll have to look it up at home, but its something like 33% or 50%.

Doesn't leave much does it!

Regards
Max P

I have a ARB 3/4 rack, but have used a full lenght rack in the past. These have been used over some fairly rough terrian, but I hever have more than a surfboard, swag and camp chairs up there.

Even with these low weightsthe mevement in the front corner pillars compared to the door frames is quite large. Even on the highway at 110km you can see this movement.

On the other hand I have nevr hear of a defender having the roof peeled off through damage, and I have seen alot of overloading with jerry cans, spare wheels etc.

So that detracts from your question. So yes that weight includes rack as is far less for offroad. So if we followed th book no one would have a rack on a defender hey??

When l was young and owned a 1984 Nissan Patrol SWB 3.3 TD, went on a trip to Cape York in 1986 with a mate & his wife, who had a 2.6 litre Nissan Wagon. Peter had a full length roof rack with 4 gutter mount points on the rack, the back rack peeled his roof gutter like a can opener when we were travelling the telegraph track due to the road corrugations.

The vibrations broke my oscar spotlight mounts and the CB antenna mount on the ARB bull bar and the rear wheel mount latch on the ARB rear step bar and the TJM second battery holder in the engine bay.

We saw countless roof racks thrown to the side of the track on that trip with busted welds.

So the moral of the story is if you can get away by not having a roof rack do so.

My parents used to have a patrol LWB, nearly ended up with a convertible, big cracks in each pillar. Dad used to load it quite heavy, and it didn't do much good. it got dodgied-up and traded in quick smart

So far the disco hasn't had any problems with the Hannible on a full length (with full length rails) rack but I havnt had it on corragations with the rack on for any lenght of time and I check gutters and pillars regularly.

I was planing on puting 4 jerrys on the rack for our next trip but I might go for sill tanks instead and just throw the kids swags up there.