www.samsonfab.com

[Samson]

I build my roof racks the same was I build everything else - form follows function.

Whether you take your vehicle offroad or not, you never want the danger or the worry of your cargo coming loose and flying all over the freeway or the trail. A roof rack should be very strong and have an excellent carrying capacity, both in weight and volume of cargo. It should protect the finish of your vehicle from your cargo and offer you lots of places to anchor your tiedowns. It should attach securely to your vehicle, be as aerodynamic as possible, and offer a number of customization options that can be securely integrated into the design, instead of being bolted-on as an afterthought. Finally, it should look good- like it's been built to beat on.

Construction: I don't think a serious offroad/safari rack should be constructed of wire. Wire is for magazine racks and bicycle baskets. I use premium 1/2" square tubing for the rails and crossbars on my racks, formed from steel, NOT aluminum. I don't have anything against aluminum per se, but steel is much stronger and in tube form weighs just nominally more than aluminum. As an additonal benefit, steel is half the cost of aluminum which means savings for you. Besides that, I've never seen an aluminum suspension bridge or an aluminum roll cage. The steel tubing I use is quite light and extremely strong. For example, my 3 foot x 5 foot racks weigh about 30 lbs, but can support over half a ton of cargo! Not that I can imagine a vehicle with a roof that could handle that kind of load, but think of it as an indicator of the quality of the product you're buying.

Speaking of that, I did fabricate a support rail system for the interior of my truck shell that enables me to carry very heavy or unwieldy loads. I can design and build a similar system for your rack, if that's what you want.

The top and bottom rack rails are each bent from from a single piece of tubing. The rack is welded at all the joints so the final product is a single-piece design that uses NO fasteners. This benefits you in two ways: First, when you buy one of my racks, you don't have to spend hours putting it together and second, no fasteners means that there are no nuts and bolts that could loosen over time. I'd hate to take a bolt-together rack down the 105 miles of offroad trail leading to Scorpion Bay, in Baja. You'd be dropping parts like breadcrumbs. Order one of my racks and keep your gear and your peace of mind!

Shapes and Sizes: My universal racks are rectangular and come in two sizes: 3 feet by 5 feet and 4 feet by 6 feet. Both of these sizes are six inches high. Custom racks can be made any size you like and as tall or short as you like. You're the customer.

I can also do custom shapes...for instance, if you have limited roof area you might need a square rack, or something octagonal. If you have a particular piece of cargo that you carry, I can bend something to an exact fit.

As another example, I surf 4-5 days per week, and it's nice to be able to take two different surfboards to the beach and then decide which one to ride once you check out the conditions at the break. Unfortunately, of my three main boards, only one of them will fit in the bed with the shell locked so I've been stuck making my best guess and carrying only one board with me. There are board-lock manufacturers that offer solutions that in the end are pretty easy to defeat and are not likely to be used in the first place, due to the difficulty in attaching them to the board. To solve the problem, I designed a rack with an integral "cage" to hold whichever surfboard I'm not using, in such a manner that it can't be stolen while I'm in the water.

Customization: Besides the size and shape of the rack, you can specify that a spare tire carrier or hi-lift jack holder be added to your rack. You can also request additional support rails and mounting brackets for drill-through installation. All these items are secured to the rack by welding as well- again, no fasteners to rattle loose. As I mentioned higher up the page, I can custom fabricate an interior support system to increase the carrying capacity of your vehicle's roof.

Light tabs can be placed anywhere on the rack. I like to have a couple lights mounted to the rear to assist in setting up camp when my wife and I hit the road. Of course you can add front tabs as well, but I've found that one of my prerunner bars offers a much better lighting solution.

If you like being self-sufficient on the road, or if like me you enjoy long trips in countries where the water is questionable and filling stations few and far between, you may want to add gasoline or water jug holders to your rack. I've found that metal jerry cans are expensive, tend to leak and only look good until you use them- and then they are prone to rust. I prefer using the Blitz 5 gallon plastic cans instead. For some reason, the cans marked "Water" are quite a bit more expensive than the others, though they're molded from the same material and are in the same shape. What I do is carry gasoline in the red gas cans and water in the blue cans marked "Kerosene." I did a 2000 mile trip through Baja with that setup and those cans worked perfectly. They're available at Wal-Mart for $6-$10 apiece.

Finishes: You have a few options here. The least-expensive and quickest way to get a rack is to order one in raw steel. That way, you can paint it yourself or take it to your local powdercoater and save money. Either option is pretty easy to do. Or, if you like the raw steel look, there are clear, tough urethane coatings on the market that can seal your rack against rust and are easy to apply.

Having said that, for a good looking finish that wears like iron, I recommend powdercoating. Powdercoat is a sprayed-on powder of dry, magnetized paint particles that sticks to sandblasted steel. Then the rack is baked in an oven at over 400 degrees. This causes the powder to melt and flow smoothly over the surface of the steel and when cooled, it hardens into a very tough finish. You can buy a raw steel rack and then take it to your local powdercoater, or I can do it for you. I've found that the best powdercoat facilities heat the metal before applying the powder, and then bake the finish on. The company I take my racks to uses this technique and does a great job.

Powdercoat is available in a wide range of standard and custom colors, though Vulcan Black (a semigloss black) is the most common finish. It's your rack, and you can have it any way you want it.

Installation: My racks readily attach to most factory rail systems, including those on SUVs, cars, and minivans. If you're local to San Diego, California, custom installation is available. Just ask!

[Samson]

I just posted a number of pictures of a rack I built for my own truck. Click http://www.samsonfab.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=22 to view.