Rick’s Rockin’ Roof Racks!!!
Or should I say Cheapskate Rick’s Rockin’ dirt cheap Roof Racks!!!
@Fixxer678 PM’d me for a few pictures on my various roof rack designs. I thought it might be of interest to other folks, so I’m posting it here.
The Road Ranger, 1997 XLT long cab (no gutters):
I got those roof bars out of a trash pile when a friend was cleaning out a rental house he owned. I wish I knew what they came from. I like them because they’re straight, not arched. I like to start with something else’s roof racks because they’re all made for the weather and traffic and such. The way the four support legs are attached, you can loosen them up and slide them inward or outward to sit right where you want them. You can pop out the plastic ends, cut them shorter, and put the ends back on, and they’re hollow underneath, so you can run your wires in there.
You can’t see it in the picture, but there’s a little wedge of high density foam underneath those 4 feet, and each foot has two bolts. My headliner was ruined before I did this, so I put them on quickly. I just put E6000 around the holes. I like E 6000 because you can peel it right off the paint later, very easily. I’ve been hunting for a replacement headliner, and when I find one, I’m going to bolt them through with fender washers, like I said before. If I recall correctly, the holes in these brackets are square, so you can use a little tiny carriage bolts if you can find them which gives a more finished look, but that’s not critical for what I’m doing
For the cross pieces, during Covid, I scored about a dozen sticks of 3/4 x 3/4 x 1/16 polished aluminum angle about 10 feet long for little money. You can see how I knotched it out on the end so it fits flush, and I just hold it all together with some self tapping hex screws. I usually put a drop of E 6000 on those screws before I finally set them. Again, for what I’m doing, I use zip ties here and there, but with a little more effort, you could conceal all the wires and the air hoses for the air horns. I’ve had those rotating beacons for decades. Someday, I’d like to replace them with strobes, because they will drain the battery in 30 minutes or less if you don’t have the engine running. If you leave your motor running around here, even in the middle of a traffic accident covered up with Police, somebody else is going to drive it away…
The headache rack behind the cab is bolted right to the frame. That was a piece of escalator fencing from a defunct shopping mall, the fence they put up at the top of an escalator so you don’t flop over to the floor below when you get off. It’s made out of super heavy duty super quality Aluminum and powder coated. I love finding stuff like that that can be repurposed and modified, and it would take a fortune in time and money to fabricate, and may even work better than my hokey ideas. I do it a lot with Aluminum toolboxes, stainless gas grills (weatherproof, handles, and sheet metal, some curved), and I even took a fancy broken giant stainless refrigerator to get a couple pretty large stainless steel panels for a project.
I have rear facing floods that work off the reverse circuit or a switch in the cab, a traffic advisor bar, high mounted brake lights w/turn signals (Jeep - I put Amber lights behind the clear reverse lens and wired them to the turn signals), and I also have five running lights like a big rig. Those running lights are dual element hi/low brite LED, so they’re parking lights when I’m driving, and when I step on the brake, they’re on a GS-100A strobe controller third brake light circuit. Four for $10. All dirt cheap.
Let me throw out one thought. Think a lot about what you want to put up there now, but also maybe later. Think about how things will be attached and where they will sit, what they weigh, and how they will act in the wind (rattling/whistling), and they may not all sit on top. I put two of my airhorns below that rack. I’m still planning on flood lights shining out the side, and maybe some shining down the side of the truck if I have to work on it. My current thinking is to put a couple lights on swivel-out arms that I could swing out to work on the truck, and leave flat in place as alley lights if I want to see left or right.
The Missing Linc, 1987 short cab short bed (has gutters):
Maybe I should’ve put this first, because after the half-assed way I put all of this together, the Road Ranger would’ve looked like a premium build!
The “light rack“ is a lid from an aluminum wing style cross bed toolbox with a lid on each side. I cut the lid down the middle, used another piece of the box to make a center part, and I put it all together with a couple pieces of aluminum angle horizontally in front and back. I cut out/shaped fillers for the front face to match the curved edge back face. Pretty shabby, but that’s part of the charm, and I did it when I couldn’t walk. If I had to do it again, I would’ve just cut the bottom of the toolbox all the way across about 2 inches up and about 10 or 12 inches deep across the bottom, flipped it over, and then used a piece of angle for the running lights on the back face. Around here you can pick up those used tool boxes for $30 or less almost all the time, free during COVID, and if there’s a couple of warps or dents, you can pop them out pretty easily with a rubber mallet or such. I love Aluminum because you can work it with woodworking tools.
The main risers are some of the Aluminum channel that came off that escalator fence (I got five panels). The back angle supports are more of that three-quarter inch lightweight angle. I had the rotating beacon for dozens of years. The two outside rear facing brake lights/turn signals are those 2-1/2 inch round trailer lights they’ve been making for 100 years, with the parking light and brake light wired together, dark until you step on the break or put the signal on. The two chrome halogen floods were Harbor Freight close outs I got for about six dollars each. I used the same high/low brightness LED running lights wired the same way into the third brake light circuit, and I used a GS-100A strobe controller to make them flash fancy (look on eBay). The rear facing floods and strobes are wired into the reverse circuit and also a switch in the cab, and I have a traffic advisor bar.
The reason I didn’t put all of this on the roof of that little truck is because it was an afterthought after I had painted the truck (with rust oleum with a paintbrush), and I had put an American flag on the roof that I wanted to leave unobstructed in case people were looking at me from trees or bridges or wherever. I put some cheap air horns behind my grill, but I don’t like them, and I’ll probably put a better set up top someday.
Big Red, 1996 F250 long cab, long bed, super duty, 4WD diesel, auto.
I’ve had this truck since new, and I put the Leer cap on it a few few days after I got it. I got that Federal light bar new with the rotating halogen beacons when it was the state of the art. Nobody ever heard of LED strobes!
The traffic advisor is one of the old Whelan hardwired bars with halogen lightbulbs. With the two massive batteries in that diesel, if you turn on both light bars at the same time, you’ve got about 30 or 40 minutes before the batteries go dead. I carry two door keys and leave it locked & running if I have to stop on the road (unless Lincoln is sitting inside - talk about an effective antitheft device!).
My go-forward plans and designs are still in development, but here are some ideas.
That Federal bar with the rotating beacons sits on heavy duty rubber pads, and has wide hook clamps that grab on the bottom of the rain gutter. I’m planning on putting up double bars like the Road Ranger that will sit inside the rain gutter, the edge wrapped in a slit piece of tubing, or maybe I’ll use a piece of toolbox and make a “table” instead of using two bars. It’ll be a bigger and heavier version of what I did to the Road Ranger. I already have a 52 inch double row LED flood bar, a 42 inch single row, a double row 36 inch, and a half dozen or eight of the little 3 inch and 4 inch LED floods. I’ll use one forward and one backward and the little ones on each side, all on separate switches.
I’m going to sand and re-clearcoat that Federal bar lens (comes out like new). I’ll definitely change the halogen bulbs to super bright LED bulbs, and/or I’ll rework it with strobes inside that oval shaped lens and get rid of the rotator motors. Right now it has two rear facing floods in the clear spots, and it has brake lights with red lenses inside the Amber. I want to keep the look, but I want something that uses a whole lot less power, and might even be brighter, so I know I’m going to be making changes inside. It will also have train horns/airhorns like the Road Ranger.
One of the reasons I want to sit it in the rain gutter is because I also want to incorporate a bar/rack across the top so if I’m carrying some big ladder, angle, pipe, or whatever, I can run it over the cab without risking the lights. Right now I have steel roof racks that came off a 1967 station wagon, I think they were from JC Whitney (?). They sit in the gutter with a clamp that hooks over the gutter. I like them because they are steel and strong but still lightweight. I bolted a 2 x 4 across the top for height, with a couple of 2x2 ends sticking up, so whatever I put up, it won’t slide off the sides. It’s pretty hokey looking, but it does the trick. I want to put something permanent in, or something that looks good and matches the light bar assembly, that would be easy to take on and off for the rare times I need something like that.
When I got the Leer cap, the state of the art back then was to have slotted rails down the length of the cap, with risers that rode in the slots, that you could lock in place with an Allen screw. They had some roughly 5/8 x 1” cross bars that were pretty heavy duty, that slid through those risers and were held in place with a knob screw. It’s one of those things that looks great on paper, but the tracks fill with crap, the risers don’t slide, the tracks trap water on the fiberglass cap so it warps, etc., etc. There’s no way for me to remove them without having to do major work to the fiberglass. When I do the rack on top of the cab, something long from the back that runs over the cab will sit on the traffic advisor and the rack on the cab, but above the cap rails. Yes, I know the cab and bed move independently, but it’s an occasional thing for me. If I’m carrying 8 foot ladders or such, I use the racks on the cap. I’ll probably make a short riser to sit on top of one of those original bars if I have to carry something long and heavy over the full length. Remember this super duty four-wheel-drive diesel is a Dunwoody truck: It doesn’t see much work. Mostly, it carries an antique every now and then, or pulls the jet skis to the lake…
The traffic advisor used to sit on some really cheap and crappy plastic angle brackets that were bolted through the fiberglass cap. The advisor bar itself is pretty heavy duty Aluminum with very high-quality halogen lights. The body is like a deep heavy Aluminum channel, with the lights across the back A couple years ago, I took it off, and incorporated it into a new assembly I fabricated.
From memory, I had some fairly heavy Aluminum angle that was something like 2“ x 4“. I bolted the long side onto the top of the back of that advisor bar, so it created a channel effect above the advisor. I put rear facing floods in there wired to the reverse lights, and I put some Amber/White strobes that come on with the reverse lights. I put trailer stop/tail/turn lights on the outside, and I replaced the little side lens with an amber lens. Driving that truck is like driving a school bus, and it’s hard to see behind you. In the middle I put in about a 12 or 16 inch long single row LED third brake light. I also used a GS-100A strobe controller on that so it flashes when you step on the brakes.
For the feet, I used a heavy piece of angle about 8 inches long to distribute the weight that I bolted through the fiberglass cap length-wise, with risers that hold the annunciator and that additional angle between them. I ran the risers high, because I can also use that whole assembly as part of a roof rack system. A couple folks at car shows who don’t know how to turn a screwdriver have commented it looks weird, and way more folks have asked me repeatedly where they could buy one.
I could go on, but like usual, I wanted to keep it short
I cut the corners out of a cross bed toolbox and turned them upside down and backwards to make my light assemblies for the Road Ranger. Again, if you think of gas grills and appliances and toolboxes, and who knows what, you’rehalfway home to fabricating something you might want to do, with better materials at half the price.
Here are the 1967 roof racks:
And here are the GS-100A strobe controllers. Four for $10. They blink very quickly three times, then flash three times, and then go solid. Lifesavers for rear end collisions.
As always, hope it helps
Oh, and here’s a sketch of the “table,” for the F250 if I go that route
