A few hours after the arc flash eye pain subsided I got back into building the Landcruiser aluminum roof rack. It was going pretty well up until the point where I realized it needed to be six inches wider! I had already cut, notched and bent a bunch of tubing and had a minor mental freak-out session when I didn’t know WTF I was going to do. My wife helped me figure out a solution.
I don’t know how I came up with a measurement of 54″ x 84″ for the rack. It seemed to make sense at the time. 
I didn’t realize my error until a small portion of the rack was tack welded and sitting on the top of the Cruiser. Ooops.
Thankfully I have extra material and am able to reuse most of the pieces that I previously cut and notched. The redesigned rack tray has a number of 5″ wide “channels” that I’ll weld 1/8″ sheet aluminum to. I’ll box some portions of it to really beef up the overall strength. This new design should actually be stronger than what I originally had planned.
I didn’t want to have to re-bend the outside rails of the tray so I now have a 6″ gap that I’ll need to splice a piece in place. I think I’ll run a piece of angle across the front and rear as a place to mount lights and hooks and stuff. The angle will strengthen the splice so it won’t be an issue other than cosmetic. I shouldn’t worry too much about cosmetics with the crappy quality of my welds.
I’m really surprised how light the rack is. Using aluminum will prove to be a smart choice when it’s all done. It will be a pain in the ass and my welds won’t be pretty but at least the rack will be strong and light.
Here’s a gallery of the progress today:
