KneesUp
Guru
Right. Well.
I have a car with some roof bars. And lots more camping equipment than will fit inside it that needs moving 400 miles this summer. Bikes will go on a bike carrier on the tow bar that the previous owner of the KneesUp jalopy had fitted. Thanks, previous owner.
Roof bars are - it strikes me - not very useful on their own. You need an 'accessory' in order to carry anything. In this regard, the old roof racks of the 70s and 80s were much more useful. However, Thule (which I think is Swedish for 'they will pay anything') charge £300 for a rack that will attach to your bars, and apart from that there doesn't seem to be much choice.
I do have a roof bag, but it's capacity is nowhere near big enough for the amount of guff that will need to be carried. I currently use it to store the tent poles in the loft, and they pretty much fill it on their own. I could hire a roof box, but it seems like a bit of a waste of £40 ... and so ... I wondered about making my own roof rack.
The plan is to make a sort of basket for the roof, into which I could place the tent fabric (Lordy that's a big bag -and it's 35kg too) and some of those plastic boxes with things like duvets (we're soft, ok?) and chair covers and blankets for around the camp fire - bulky light stuff, basically - and the tent fabric (if I can get it up there)
I can't weld, but I've discovered 'Tube clamp' which is basically scaffolding, but you can get it in thin tubes (just over an inch across) It's comfortably strong enough (265kg load over a 1 metre span and 900kg load per joint)
http://www.themetalstore.co.uk/products/tube-clamp - no link to this company (or tubeclamp)
So the idea is to make two rectanlges with the three way elbows at the corner, and join them with 25cm uprights, then lay two more lengths across the bottom rectangle, giving me a basket with four bars across the bottom to load things on to, and a nice guard rail thing to stop it falling off (and for me to attach straps to)..
Obviously the rack will be heavy (18.49kg based on the dimensions I'd need - tubeclamps give all the weights) but my car has an 80kg limit, which still gives me 60kg+ of luggage up there.
Does this sound like a good idea? Something I should tell my insurer about? Something the BiB might be interested in? Or just an ludicrous excuse to play Meccano?
I have a car with some roof bars. And lots more camping equipment than will fit inside it that needs moving 400 miles this summer. Bikes will go on a bike carrier on the tow bar that the previous owner of the KneesUp jalopy had fitted. Thanks, previous owner.
Roof bars are - it strikes me - not very useful on their own. You need an 'accessory' in order to carry anything. In this regard, the old roof racks of the 70s and 80s were much more useful. However, Thule (which I think is Swedish for 'they will pay anything') charge £300 for a rack that will attach to your bars, and apart from that there doesn't seem to be much choice.
I do have a roof bag, but it's capacity is nowhere near big enough for the amount of guff that will need to be carried. I currently use it to store the tent poles in the loft, and they pretty much fill it on their own. I could hire a roof box, but it seems like a bit of a waste of £40 ... and so ... I wondered about making my own roof rack.
The plan is to make a sort of basket for the roof, into which I could place the tent fabric (Lordy that's a big bag -and it's 35kg too) and some of those plastic boxes with things like duvets (we're soft, ok?) and chair covers and blankets for around the camp fire - bulky light stuff, basically - and the tent fabric (if I can get it up there)
I can't weld, but I've discovered 'Tube clamp' which is basically scaffolding, but you can get it in thin tubes (just over an inch across) It's comfortably strong enough (265kg load over a 1 metre span and 900kg load per joint)
http://www.themetalstore.co.uk/products/tube-clamp - no link to this company (or tubeclamp)
So the idea is to make two rectanlges with the three way elbows at the corner, and join them with 25cm uprights, then lay two more lengths across the bottom rectangle, giving me a basket with four bars across the bottom to load things on to, and a nice guard rail thing to stop it falling off (and for me to attach straps to)..
Obviously the rack will be heavy (18.49kg based on the dimensions I'd need - tubeclamps give all the weights) but my car has an 80kg limit, which still gives me 60kg+ of luggage up there.
Does this sound like a good idea? Something I should tell my insurer about? Something the BiB might be interested in? Or just an ludicrous excuse to play Meccano?
