Interestingly enough I called Front Runner yesterday to see if they had an estimate of availability and the sales person I spoke with couldn't find any information about their shipment from South Africa. I logged onto the website this morning and both rack stated that they were available for immediate shipping. I ordered mine

 

Avoid Front Runner's long rack. You'll have to remove the roof rails and some of us have not been able to remove the bolts. I went to a dealership in California this week and their body shop was unable to remove them. I've read similar cases here, in FB, and reddit.

 

yes...I read that as well. I ordered the short rack.

 

17 days at the dealership for my roof bolts to be fixed. I was also not impressed with the fitment of the full size rack. The plastic spacers they made to fill the gutter didn't fit at all. Lots of cutting and grinding to get it to fit.

 

Did they end up removing those discs for you? Hoping it wasn’t as complicated as you’d said. I’m not even going to have them fix it. Just went with custom rack build from a local company that’s in the process of prototyping it now. Just told them to sheer the remaining bolt off and create their own solution lol.

 

They were able to get them out, but they had to cut the bolts and drill the inserts out. The foreman said he has an approach that would be a quick fix (no need to drop headliner) that might work, if not they would have to drop the headliner and cut them out. I guess my vehicle was a bit of a learning experience.

 

i have the front runner long rack and I love it. Installed it myself. The bolts into the roof were tough definitely had some of my ratchets skipping some teeth but if you have just a breaker bar or I’m even a ratchet and some patience you’ll be fine. It fits so much better to the truck than the shorty.

 

just as a counterpoint for future buyers consideration, this was not my experience at all

 

The rack is fine, my only issue is with the plastic inserts. I had to do some cutting to get them to sit flush. I also noticed yesterday that the plastic inserts warp very badly in the sun. It was raised out of the channel in the roof. I've attached some photos.


Notch that had to be extended

How it fit before cutting

How it fit after cutting

How the front fit before cutting

Warping after sitting in direct sunshine all day.

 

That last photo is crazy. Is that with the rack fully tightened down and everything? Damn. I mean I live in Boston so maybe I’ll never see the temps that would do that, but if it did do it, I’d be pissed. I’d say you’re within the realm of reasonable frustration there. I didnt have to trim my plastic inserts at all. Maybe I should be thanking my lucky stars.

although it’s funny that now that I spend more time on the top of my defender. The build quality leaves something to be desired from the factory. So maybe it’s the brits and not the South Africans.

🤷🏿‍♂️