Roof rack connection to round crossbars

[BroncoHauler]

I spent a long weekend with New Mexico Black Range tours (formerly New Mexico Back Roads) covering about 325 miles of the Gila National Forest in three days. It was a great, but fast-paced trip. Wasn't suitable for high profile vehicles like Sportsmobiles due to some overhanging tree cover, but a full sized truck on 37's did just fine.

Now that I'm in the what-can-I-do-better phase, I'm thinking about my gear storage, and if I may want to add a roof rack to my Bronco. The Bronco has a soft top, so options are very limited, but the soft top manufacturer has cross bars that mount to the soft top frame, so that's my starting point.

The cross bars are round tubing (I need to figure out the diameter) so whatever rack I might go with, I need to clamp the rack to the round tubing. My initial thought is to go with a flat, low profile roof rack like the Front Runner rack, or the new ARB Base rack. Both of these racks use flat slats as the platform to store material on.


https://www.frontrunneroutfitters.co...=1443&328=1471


https://arbusa.com/products/roof-racks/arb-base-rack/


Is anyone aware of a good option to secure a rack to a round tube (similar to Yakima round crossbars)? I know mating round tubing to flat slats is a bad geometry situation, but I really like the low profile nature of the slat-based roof racks. Small u-bolts are always an option, just not a "clean" option.


I called Front Runner and the guy who answered was not particularly helpful "You may need custom fabrication or maybe use Fourtreks to mount your rack." I think when it's a non-standard installation, they (or at least the guy I talked to) don't know enough to offer experienced suggestions.


thanks,
Herb

[marret]

I've been contemplating adding solar on my round-tube front roof rack and have done some searching.

No personal experience, but here is one I found, working load limit 1100 pounds:
https://www.thelightsource.com/produ...oupler-2-5-130

[arctictraveller]

I'm doing a tubing project and looking for something similar to make a removable cross bar / light mount above the windshield. The mount below might work, and there are others, try searching "light bar mount for tube"

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/a...AaAqQwEALw_wcB

[Bellpilot]

Aluminess makes slightly adjustable cross bars for their tubular roof racks? A friend of mine had an older roof rack and he sent them the dimensions and they built the cross bars custom for him. First rate on the machining and attachment points to the tubular frame.

[Blowby]

Not sure if this would work for you,but I have had success with these brackets from Rough Country.
Used these to attach a solar panel and cell booster to my Aluminess Roof rack.https://www.roughcountry.com/univers...mps-7017c.html