17' Series van Roof rack

[Nath69]

Hi All.
Has anyone considered fitting or has fitted a roof rack of some kind on the Expanda?

I have an 18 foot long ocean Ski I would like to take away on holidays. It is light but way too long to put on the car roof racks with the van behind and the racks are usually full of SUPs and surfboards anyway.

It would be a bugger to take off and I would need a ladder but it would be awesome for some of the places we go.

Thanks

 

[poor but proud]

Hi All.
Has anyone considered fitting or has fitted a roof rack of some kind on the Expanda?

I have an 18 foot long ocean Ski I would like to take away on holidays. It is light but way too long to put on the car roof racks with the van behind and the racks are usually full of SUPs and surfboards anyway.

It would be a bugger to take off and I would need a ladder but it would be awesome for some of the places we go.

Thanks

putting racks on top of any van looks good area wise,but i feel that you would be setting yourself up for potential troubles,too many van already sag in the roof through no internal support and there are too many posts about water leaking into vans,even though the canoe is light the loading process will put all weight and stresses onto the end of the rack/bars before the canoe is laid flat for tie down,this process will further stress any fixing points and lead to roof damage and leaks.
the racks you see on campers, usually are fixed to the trailer body and fold out of the way. racks fitted to cars and rvs are fitted to weight rated structures not a thin van roof,we carry a 12ft canoe on our car which is also a pain to load/ unload, the only thought that comes to mind is a tradie rack off the front of the car to allow the canoe to be loaded further forward??

 

[Crusty181]

I would think its doable. Jayco added aircons and solar panels to the poptop roofs without any modifications to the poptop roof frames. The poptop roof is a fairly substantial alum frame and thats where you would be fixing any roof rack bases. Plenty of people, caravan dealers and caravan repairers add multiple solar panels at upto 15kg per unit without hestitation. As @poor but proud says loading would be the only issue, but when youre keen enough ..... !!!!!

 

[Drover]

Agree with @Crusty181 , done properly shouldn't be a drama, say alloy angle along edges of roof (assuming pop top) glued and screwed with some box alloy cross bars to mount the ski on, I had an idea for my Yak with the cross bar having rollers so could stand on a ladder/step affair on draw bar and drag the thing off... never did it but it was a plan.

 

[mfexpanda]

i Agree with @Crusty181 well there you go !!

i would make the rack similar to the ones used on jayco campers mounted to the outside .