T-Rock
Well-Known Member
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- #1
We recently took a 2100+ mile trip with our dogs and needed to keep luggage secure and out of the elements. The dogs take up pretty much the entire back seat & since I have a Decked drawer system in my JT I don't have the ability to put luggage under my tonneau cover (4-5" just isn't enough space lol). The RSI Smartcap is still on order so I was left with figuring out options for this trip.
We have an OLD Yakima roof top hard-shell carrier sitting in the side yard so I figured out a way to mount it to carry our luggage. I thought I would share this relatively cheap option (if you have a roof top carrier already!).
I do not have the trail rail system, which I found MOST of the cross-bar systems require for the JT.
Initially I tried to attach the Yakima directly to the Decked cargo rails but the sizing was off and I couldn't get it to work without drilling my Decked system, which I was not willing to do.
My solution was to find some heavy duty shelf brackets that I could attach to the bed using the pre-existing threaded attachment points for the trail rail system. 4 of those on Amazon were around $20. Because the shape of the bed is not flat I also got some rubber spacers at Ace Hardware to fill the gap. The brackets could "spin" with only one bolt in each so I also picked up some aluminum angle stock. That was used to attach the two brackets on each side to each other. So the front and rear shelf brackets were limited in "spinning" on the one bolt that held each shelf bracket. I also put a small felt pad on the back of the shelf bracket so it wouldn't scratch the inside of the bed in the area that was below the spacers.
Then I found a cheap set of roof top cross bars that looked like the attachment legs could be removed. Those were $99 on Amazon - and to be honest they are a bit flimsy but did work fine. If this wasn't a temporary solution until the Smartcap comes in I would buy better quality cross bars because these did sag when fully loaded. I removed the attachment legs from the cross bars and drilled holes through them so I could bolt them onto the shelf brackets.
At this point the cross bars and aluminum angle stock create a box around the truck bed, which stabilizes itself from shifting. I then attached the Yakima to the cross bars and off we went on our trip.
The setup had no problems on this 9 day trip and I could imagine others may have similar needs for a lower cost carrier for a rack or hard-shell carrier like this. I was actually approached at a hotel in Colorado during this trip by someone with a JT who was trying to figure out how to carry his kids, dogs and luggage without a cap/shell on his rig. He didn't have a tonneau and liked the look of this setup. That was the inspiration for sharing this long post.
I mounted the Yakima in "reverse" (low end toward the back rather than toward the front as you would on a roof) and closer to the drivers side to make it easier to reach for loading/unloading.
The end result looks like the attached pictures.
We have an OLD Yakima roof top hard-shell carrier sitting in the side yard so I figured out a way to mount it to carry our luggage. I thought I would share this relatively cheap option (if you have a roof top carrier already!).
I do not have the trail rail system, which I found MOST of the cross-bar systems require for the JT.
Initially I tried to attach the Yakima directly to the Decked cargo rails but the sizing was off and I couldn't get it to work without drilling my Decked system, which I was not willing to do.
My solution was to find some heavy duty shelf brackets that I could attach to the bed using the pre-existing threaded attachment points for the trail rail system. 4 of those on Amazon were around $20. Because the shape of the bed is not flat I also got some rubber spacers at Ace Hardware to fill the gap. The brackets could "spin" with only one bolt in each so I also picked up some aluminum angle stock. That was used to attach the two brackets on each side to each other. So the front and rear shelf brackets were limited in "spinning" on the one bolt that held each shelf bracket. I also put a small felt pad on the back of the shelf bracket so it wouldn't scratch the inside of the bed in the area that was below the spacers.
Then I found a cheap set of roof top cross bars that looked like the attachment legs could be removed. Those were $99 on Amazon - and to be honest they are a bit flimsy but did work fine. If this wasn't a temporary solution until the Smartcap comes in I would buy better quality cross bars because these did sag when fully loaded. I removed the attachment legs from the cross bars and drilled holes through them so I could bolt them onto the shelf brackets.
At this point the cross bars and aluminum angle stock create a box around the truck bed, which stabilizes itself from shifting. I then attached the Yakima to the cross bars and off we went on our trip.
The setup had no problems on this 9 day trip and I could imagine others may have similar needs for a lower cost carrier for a rack or hard-shell carrier like this. I was actually approached at a hotel in Colorado during this trip by someone with a JT who was trying to figure out how to carry his kids, dogs and luggage without a cap/shell on his rig. He didn't have a tonneau and liked the look of this setup. That was the inspiration for sharing this long post.
I mounted the Yakima in "reverse" (low end toward the back rather than toward the front as you would on a roof) and closer to the drivers side to make it easier to reach for loading/unloading.
The end result looks like the attached pictures.
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