Roof rack or multi-purpose platform?

One way of carrying gear on the roof that has worked well for us.

For our trips, the roof rack carries the rooftop tent at the rear and a specially shaped cargo box at the front. Behind the tent, on the rear edge of the rack, sits a roll-out ARB awning that covers the kitchen we set up at the back of the car. It protects us from rain and sun.

Our first experience of carrying gear on the roof of our Land Cruiser was the usual combination: the factory roof rails with crossbars fitted on top.The biggest advantage: the market is full of accessories for this setup. Simple, quick and… high.The biggest drawback: “high”. Roof rails plus crossbars usually lift whatever is mounted on them, a rooftop tent for example, about 15 cm above the car’s roof.

Roof platform or roof rack: our solution is extremely stable, strong and very low-profile. The whole rack is only about 3 cm higher than the factory roof rails.

On our Land Cruiser, the tent reached a height of almost 2.5 m. We decided to build a strong steel roof rack that sits as close to the car’s roof as possible and is fitted in place of the original roof rails. It is not bolted together from separate pieces. It was made to measure and fits exactly into the six sets of mounting holes used by the roof rails.

The view from above shows how simple the design is. At the same time, the crossbars make it very rigid and strong. At the rear, and on both sides towards the back of the rack, we fitted extra work lights. On the rear edge of the rack you can see four caps covering the mounting holes for the rear awning.

Any kind of equipment can be mounted on it. For us, the goal was the rooftop tent, which after a small modification now practically “lies” on the rack, and mounting it is very simple [link].

With this solution, the tent sits in probably the lowest position possible. There is no gap at all between the tent and the rack, and only a small one between the rack and the car’s roof. In this photo only the tent is fitted; the cargo box is missing from the front of the rack. The two extra steel plates visible at the front, between the rack’s crossbars, serve as a base for magnetic-mount antennas, for example those supporting our Garmin Alpha 300i dog tracking system.

Once the tent was on, there was plenty of space left at the front of the rack. We used it for an extra cargo box, shaped to reduce fuel consumption [link].

Even though we know the whole setup very well, before every trip we mount everything and do a trial set-up of the tent. We air it again, check it and put a fresh sheet on the mattress. At this stage two unrolled down sleeping bags, our favourite pillows and Mrok’s blanket go inside. At the first overnight stop, all we have to do is unfold the tent and everything is ready.

We had two concerns about the rack itself:

1. Would the car, with the rack but without the tent, fit into a car park with a 2 m height limit? That is the limit in most car parks at shopping centres and in similar covered car parks.

2. How much would air resistance increase, and would we get extra noise, which owners of roof racks with LED light bars sometimes complain about? In our case, since we had a convenient place to mount one, an LED light bar went on almost straight away.
   

   

   The powerful front LED light bar. Dark tunnels in Norway, forgotten mountain roads, unknown places: that is what we like, and when good light helps us along, it is even more enjoyable and, in many situations, safer. The photo also shows the two mounting points for magnetic-base antennas and the silver bolt heads that fix the floor of the cargo box to the rack.

It turned out that the height was fine (with the rack the car is under 2 m, and 2.3 m with the tent fitted), and we were lucky enough to avoid the noise.

The whole platform is about 3 cm higher than the original roof rails. What normally means roof rails, then crossbars on top of them, and only then the tent, for us comes down to bolting the tent straight to the platform with four bolts. This is our own idea, and thanks to it there is no fiddling about between the roof rails and the roof, because the tent bolts on from the side [photo].

Mounting a rooftop tent on crossbars fitted to roof rails is not difficult, but it can be hard to reach in with tools between the tent and the rails. Our tent has two profiles that drop in between the side profiles of the rack, so all we have to do is screw in four bolts, comfortably. See how we changed the way our tent is mounted.

We easily found places to mount extra side and rear lights. We use them mainly when manoeuvring at night in new, unfamiliar places, where it is easy to drive onto something you cannot see.

The roof rack is one of several pieces of equipment we have replaced with our own designs. The others are both bumpers, reinforced side steps mounted to the chassis frame, the bike carrying system and, of course, the underbody protection. You will find more details here.

The biggest advantage of this platform is also its drawback: it was made to measure. Similar solutions are widely available, but they are usually higher, which is worth keeping in mind when choosing a roof rack.

Our night life somewhere in Portugal. Everything that travels with us is fixed to the car in a well thought-out way, and the roof rack is a key part of that setup.

After several years of use, we know our platform is truly multi-purpose: you can not only live on it, but also walk on it, lay down a mat and lie on it, and carry pretty much anything. If we were choosing a new solution, it would be… identical.

The small lamps visible on the corner of the rack are in fact very powerful lights. We use them mainly when we reach our overnight spot after dark and are moving around unfamiliar ground. The reinforced extra reversing lights help, but switching on all the lights makes manoeuvring much easier, and when it comes to parking at night in heavy rain, it is hard to imagine managing well without them.

If that were not possible, we would look for a roof rack fitted in place of the original roof rails, not on top of them.

Many overland vehicles are hard to mistake for anything else, because everything about them says “I’m an expedition vehicle”. We went for functionality, which is not always spectacular, but works without failing. Once we take off what we bring on a trip, wash the car and give it a coat of wax, it becomes a fairly unremarkable old Toyota Land Cruiser: a car we travel through many countries in, but also drive to the cinema back home in Poland.