My garage is just standard 8 ft. Were you using the speedlink or t-bolts? The speedlink puts it up a good bit higher.

 

No, the T-bolts. My garage is an unfortunate 7'. Architects, they do forget the silliest things (and he is an avid skier and ex-Ski Patrolman, should have known better). Like there is no closet for the vacuum cleaner and its associated mound of stuff. The guy that commissioned this house had one of those SLT trucks (Stupidly Large Truck). It must have fit with millimeters to spare. Frankly the stool is more to pull on boots, since the 90 does not have a lot of space in the rear, to place mine on. It does make arranging things on top a lot easier. folds flat, so it is out of the way. I was considering making a folding bench that attached to the hitch to sit on. I would have to make it from aluminum, so it was light. Just my heli-arc work is not very pretty. So $29 for a folding stool is a good expense and keeps me from over-engineering yet another stupid project. I wish the Thule had fit, it was convenient, but even a bit too tall on the Range Rover for my garage. We like to load up every evening so we can make the first lift in the morning. We ski for an hour and a half, every weekday, then go to work. Do have to tune it down a notch this year, my two broken ribs from the end of last season (clipped a snowboarder at the speed of heat) keep reminding me to act my age (Jurassic).

 

Agree w/ @GavinC - Roof top is Preference #1. Followed by hitch then tire. But, I thought you had garage issues with the first option. If not, ton of great advice up above. Post your final results!

 

Yeah, I guess I'm pretty sure we'll go rooftop now.

Garage ceiling height is absolutely no issue for me, but I'm dealing with one of those 7' door openings so that's a concern.

So which of these combo's fit under the 7' doors?

@Dogpilot - you have the Thule crossbars and the Yakima Fat Cat and that combo works with 7' doors right? (ahhh but I see you wrote this "I ended up making different feet adaptors for the crossbar feet to lower it and custom mounting blocks for the Yakima, again to lower it." - how hard was the fabrication? Just cutting stuff not welding?)

@gschmitt - you have the OEM crossbars, with the Fat Cat and smart T-slot set-up. Do you happen to have 7' doors? I was actually leaning towards the OEM bars because I like using OEM parts, but I guess it's not particularly important. If you don't have a 7" garage could I impose on you to measure the height of the top of the Fat Cat above the top of the roof rail? We've got 8" to play with

 

Yes my opening is 83", sigh and kind of dips down to 82.5~82" in the middle. Been the bane of stuff on top for the last 20 years. I outlined in this thread what I ended up doing to make the Thule/Fatcat combo work. I was able to lower the entire assembly 1.5" by making/substituting a few items. If you have the skis on top, you need to keep the car at access height. Which is dangerous, at least for a space caydet like me. The Thule Pull Top would also squeak by on the Range Rover, but the bindings would not. The Range Rover had a large loadspace in the rear, so we just tossed them there. No modifying that roof top system. New car new problems. The thread starts out with my tribulations with the bike rack and moves on to the ski rack.

Modifying the Thule/Fatcat system

 

Thanks I'll go through that thread and check it out.

I just remeasured - we're 83.5" to the joist, maybe only 83" to the weather-stripping. Maybe it would even fit without modification, we'll see if we go that way.

Now I'm just curious if the OEM crossbars offer any height advantage or if they are essentially the same.

 

I was able to increase the upmost stop position of my garage door by about 1". Made all the difference and my ski-rack fits with about 0.5" to spare. I have to load my ski's with the bindings down to allow it to fit under so it needs a little finagling of the rack's crossbars.

Something to look at on your garage door opener perhaps.




~0.5" between rack and open door

 

Noted and thank you - actually I believe I've seen you post about that before.

However, that's not relevant for me since the GARAGE FRAME and not the DOOR is the limiting factor. My door lifts up and sits at least a 1/2" above the frame at ~84" at the lowest point.

 

I'll measure the distance about the top of the OEM rails to the top of the FatCat tonight after work.

I do however have larger than stock tires (BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2 265/70R18) which are just under 33" (32.6"), so my defender is taller than stock.

My garage door is 8', I do not have any clearance issues in any height mode.

 

Yes the whole rack mod thing would have been academic if the Defender had seats such as the Range Rover had. The center rear seat would halfway fold down. Then you removed a velcroed panel to reveal a ski bag. So you put the skis in from the rear and then the bag extended forward, containing the snow melt and protecting your interior. It was standard. I looked at getting one off a totaled RR, but there where none even remotely close and the yards wanted me too buy the entire rear seat assembly and then ship it. Of course I didn't use mine that much, since the loadspace accommodated the skis on the rubber rear mat diagonally. I was lazy and didn't feel like folding the bag back into the seat very often.