DIY Full Platform, Low Profile Roof Rack for GX460 - under $200!

Full size roof rack mounted, a time consuming DIY

My goals with this rack: DIY, full roof size, able to stand on, as low profile as possible, can connect to stock rails and be quickly removable. 

The heavy duty cross bars I made work fine for hauling beach items and lumber from the 'Depot. I was planning on making a fairing to eliminate the little bit of wind noise and adding flat platform material to it.

The larger issue I ran into was they were not long enough to support a full 8' sheet of material, leaving the front to bend down toward the roof, and the curve of the roof track made them uneven for a flat cover. 

Reality is I felt the itch to do a project and weld more. I want a solid platform to mount items to that are odd shapes or heavier, like max tracks, an awning, or a spare 5 gallons of gas for offroad excursions in this thirsty truck. 

But really, who doesn't want to look like they are on a safari, rolling curbs in the Target parking lot?

After looking at several options running from $800 to $1600 I decided it was time to once again DIY. 

I'm not going to spend $1600 just for a roof rack! I  and a good project is a great way to learn some new skills. Work has kept me busy and it'd been a while since I welded so this was a perfect excuse. 

I looked at options from 4Runner stock rack conversions to all the latest bespoke rack "toys" that are available to buy. While extruded aluminum erector set styles were tempting, the material cost was still higher than steel while not providing a huge benefit to me over traditional welded tube other than a different aesthetic and a few pounds. 

With only a basic grinder and welder I picked up some mandrel U bends and 60' of 1" steel tube at .060" thickness at the local steel yard. 

It was 1/2 the cost to get U bends instead of 90* bends, and I cut them down the middle with a pipe cutter to minimize material loss from a cut-off disk.

Here we go! $130 well spent:

The first layout on the floor leads to tack welding. Rectangle for the win!  I learned my garage floor is not as flat as I thought... (I welded, it helded.) The tricky part is minimizing warp!

So far so good, it's a rectangle! Time to cut "fishmouths" and some very careful measuring. I'll tack the cross pieces in, weigh down the hoop and hopefully they'll help keep it from warping when I have to to final welding.

My plan to use a hole saw to fishmouth the tubes didn't work so I made a template to mark the ends and it was easy to do with the angle grinder. Probably faster too.

I struggled to decide on how I wanted the tubes set up but I decided on an even 12" spacing up to the front. I have to add 1/8" plate for the feet to mount to but I want to keep the weight down so I went with the minimum amount of steel I thought I could use: 4" wide. 

The crossbar spacing of 12" will allow me to use 24x48" Dura-slat as a decking material along several spans. I can weld in any additional tubes or mounting tabs or cross bracing etc in the future (or even remove some). One of the beauties of steel!

My first iteration will be mounting this to the stock roof rails in 4 places with small spacers under the front  and rear to level it out. This would allow me to mount the rack, then remove it back to stock without reinstalling the roof track and the subsequent sealing.

All tack welded

After I tack welded it up, I test fit it on the roof and determined the height of the mounting feet and the overall positioning. I did not like the spacing I gave to the extended bars. They cut too close to the body of the vehicle. I cut all the tacks on the extension parts and reworked the entire thing. I swapped some tubes around and even had to weld in a small extension. I re-cut all the braces, and reworked them to fit again. 

This time, it fit a lot better. In fact, I can now go about a 1/2 inch lower on the mounts if I remade them.

Next up was fully welding it. Due to the thinner tubes at .060 I managed heat by stitching the tacks together and moving around strategically to minimize the metal warping and pulling. In order to avoid any pressure issues I drilled a small hole in each closed tube to release heated welding gasses. I inserted a Pop-rivet after all was done.

I'm very much a beginner, not a welder, but it seemed to work out fine and I got lots of practice!

Not pretty, but all mine... I got better with time.

Not the best welds but I got better with time and it's all part of the process!. After welding the bottom side it was bowing evenly, and after welding the top side it pulled back to flat. From this angle you can see its nice and flat. Grind, sand, prime and paint!

Flat and not warped after finish welding

After a lot of slower finish work like grinding, smoothing some tubes, cleaning up spatter, sand, prime, paint etc. my hardware came in and I bolted it up. 

Looking petty good to me. Not perfect but it's going to do the job fine. If I need to take it off it's a matte of undoing the mounts, lifting off and I still have the stock finished roof rails. 

I do have tabs and gussets I may weld on but I wanted to mount it up first. I may redo the rail mounts to something a little nicer looking and then take it off and do it all at once. A project for the future.

The stock rack is LOUD by itself. The bars hum above 35mph. Wrapping paracord around round tubes can dampen some of this response but of course a fairing is best.

The 48" fairing is made from two pieces of 1/4" Acrylic I already had. I cut them together, sanded then glued the center together.

I may play with the shape in the future but I chose to make a large full coverage fairing raked nearly even with the windshield to smoothly redirect the air as much as possible. It sits about 1/4" from the roof and is held on with "P-clamps". 

Now its pretty much silent.