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Rola Roof Basket


merlinx
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Hey all I just bought a roof basket for my 97 pathy. It attaches to the stock luggage rails. Fits fine and looks good but I was wondering if anyone has any idea on how to mount it directly to the rails or fabricate a mounting system that supports more weight. The factory rails on the pathy look like they are made from plastic. Im afraid to overloaded and have them break. Any ideas? I thought about replicating the factory luggage cross bars with some steal ones but wouldnt even know where to start.

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Exactly - Yakima and Thule offer sweet systems that are fully adjustable within the factory track system. No limit to how many bars you can add - so if you need more strength, add more bars. But two bars will hold a lot of weight, the way the footers are held in the tracks there is nowhere for them to go - I'm not sure how they would fail.

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I could be wrong, but I think Yakima or Thule make replacement cross bars and pedestals that slide into the stock rails.

yes they do, I have the Thule system... but it's not cheap.

 

I had my basket on the pathy rails the first summer I had it, and had no issues.

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yes they do, I have the Thule system... but it's not cheap.

 

I had my basket on the pathy rails the first summer I had it, and had no issues.

I looked at those they were pretty expensive. are those rails much stronger than the oem rails? can you buy them separate? I just want to make this baskey mount stronger

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you can buy all the bits and pieces separately... I bought the bars from someone else, and had to pick up the towers myself... check out thule's website...

 

They are very sturdy. I wasnt entirely worried about the stock bars, other than the labels suggesting I not load them more than ?? pounds... The Thlue set up is nice piece of mind... I ended up getting a third bar to mount the wind fairing & a couple lights...

 

ne4wd_342.jpg

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The Rola is nice I just wish it was a little deeper.

Will check out the Thule site. Does anyone sell the bars used?

 

The manual says to not load the top more than 150 LBS so minus the weight of the basket that leaves me 110 - 115lbs. Thats what worries me. When I pull the basket up and down I can see the stock bars flexing. Just worried me.

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Thule and yakima stuff are all over ebay and craigslist. The bars are universal, any width will work, you can always cut down the longer ones. The feet are vehicle-specific, but the R50 uses a system that is similar to others. I bought a used set of crossbars/mounts from a Ford Explorer and they fit fine. You can look at the refrence catalogs at a retailer (bike/ski shop, REI) or use the web. The weight limit you're reading is in reference to the flexy Nissan crossbars, although all companies will have a disclaimer around the same weight.

 

You rarely need a deep roofrack basket. A lip of a couple inches will keep most items inboard, anything deeper just makes it harder to lift stuff out. Your lashing technique will make a bigger difference as far as keeping stuff up there.

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Alex, I'll make it easy for you.

 

Yakima - $400

Rola - $150

Mine - $250 but more than 10x the load carrying capacity of either.

But how do you deal with distributing the weight on the roof? Any issues? (I assume you are going well over the 150 lbs stock limit, yes?)

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you can buy all the bits and pieces separately... I bought the bars from someone else, and had to pick up the towers myself... check out thule's website...

 

They are very sturdy. I wasnt entirely worried about the stock bars, other than the labels suggesting I not load them more than ?? pounds... The Thlue set up is nice piece of mind... I ended up getting a third bar to mount the wind fairing & a couple lights...

 

ne4wd_342.jpg

Hey thanks for showing off your cool bumper.Its bad enough we cant get one,now you go and rub our noses in it. :sniff:

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Sorry man... if it makes you feel better, I showed it off before we even thought we could get another run.. so I'm not being particularily jerktastic to you all today, it's always. :D

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Not sure where you're at (little too lazy to look at profiles right now..) but I still have the yakima set up from my pathfinder, worked great. They use the metal tabs that are already in your factory roof rails and mount like that. I used to carry 4 kayaks or 4 mountain bikes or 2 kayaks and my friend sitting in one of them... its a strong set up. I was a certified yakima installer/rep at the shop I used to work at so if you have any questions let me know.

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