DIY Frontrunner style roof rack
 

It's certainly not a new idea, but I hadn't seen it on a LR so I thought I'd share what I built. I made a frontrunner style rack out of a Harbor Freight ATV ramp. I call it frontrunner style because it's flat with no sides, certainly not as good looking as the real thing. For tools I used a sawz-all, angle grinder with a flap disc, misc hand tools and the neighbor's welder. I started with this ramp: https://www.harborfreight.com/1500-l...amp-60334.html which I had an additional 20% off coupon for. I was able to score some free 1" square steel tubing at work for cross bars, I used about 13'. The last ingredient is hardware. I used fender washers, carriage bolts and acorn nuts to secure it to the roof. Oh, I almost forgot, I bought 1.5" square and 1"x2" plugs off Amazon to fill the ends of the rack and the crossbars.

After unboxing the ramp, I drilled the pop rivets out of the hinges and tailgate tabs to remove them and bolted the 3 ramp sections together. This gave me roughly a 44"x 65" platform which I painted flat black.

My brother made a rack like this but used a Yakima system which attached to roof rails on his Sequoia. While it worked perfectly well I was looking for as low profile as possible. I had hoped to use the cross bars directly on the roof tacks, but that left about 3/16" clearance between the bar and the roof glass. I opted to cut a 3" piece of tubing with a 45 degree angle on one end and welded it to the ends of my cross bar to raise it up off the glass. After test fitting the rack with a front and rear cross bar, I found the middle bar spacer had to be 1/8" shorter. I also cut this with a sawz-all, not because it's the right tool, but because it's what I had! I contemplated just using JB Weld to attach the spacers to the cross bars, but ultimately I went to the neighbor's and used his welder. This was the only "fabrication" I had to do.

After my bars were welded and painted it was just a matter of layout and drilling holes. I opted to have it sit as far back as I could and clear the tailgate when up. After looking into ladders, this may be too far back. I found the Hi-Lift from a previous vehicle laid perfectly across the back of the rack, so I drilled holes for more carriage bolts to hold it down. I can install a shovel with the tip under the Hi-Lift and strap the handle to the rack, as well as strap an axe to the other side. I was contemplating some more permanent mouth solutions for these, but like the idea of not more hardware sticking up when the accessories are off.

As a side note, I had to chuckle at myself for even mounting the Hi-Lift on the rack. Since I still have factory bumpers and no sliders, I can't even use it on my rig. It's just funny how they've become a "must have" when you venture off road. They've got to be top 5 must have items if we were to take a poll, even though they're dangerous as all get out and I doubt most people know how to use them. I see them on all kinds of mall crawler JK's here in UT!

Last, it was pretty noisy on the highway and even had a little vibration if the wind was right, so I stole the fairing off my daughters car! Well, actually I traded her a new style yakima fairing for the old one that was attached to MY roof rack on HER car. That made a night and day difference in road noise.

It was a pretty fun project and I'm mostly happy with the results. It doesn't look too homemade so that was a big plus for me.

I like it!

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/landrov...f9fb9fec45.jpg

Yes

I know this is an old thread, but that's a great innovative way to add to the LR4. I'm curious though, it seems very close to the sunroof. Does the sunrise still have full functionality?

Yes, it clears the rack. If you put a fairing on it it may affect the function, depending on how it’s mounted. I never use it, but a couple of weekends ago I opened it to take a picture while on a trail run and it wouldn’t close. The sunroof hit the middle mounting bolt for the fairing and had gone into the “anti entrapment” mode. It took awhile to figure it out since I didn’t know it did that, thank goodness for the owners manual. Once the offending bolt was removed it was able to cycle through the entire travel and reset the system. I highly recommend the fairing, it was very noisy before I mounted that. I think I just need to cut down that bolt and it’ll clear just fine, but I haven’t tried it because I never use the sunroof.

Nice! Love the DIY build. How did you go about bolting the cross bars down to the factory roof rails? I’m looking to do a similar DIY build on my LR3 using aluminum extrusions. The roof rack feet are the last component I need to figure out.

Thanks!

I used steel plate cut down to fit in the factory track. I drilled holes drilled in the center and carriage bolts run up trough the plates and bars. The factory track get pinched between the plates and the bars. It takes a little trial and error to get it right, but my bars bolt down nice and tight.

nice. Great info, thanks!