Question for Roof Rack Cross Bars

The steel style has a stainless option.

 

Reasons I like the slotted steel/stainless ones better than the aluminum extruded:

• various t-nuts, roll-in nuts, and twist-in nuts are often not as sturdy a connection as you'd expect.
• various t-nuts for channel use come in a bunch of sizes and finding out which size is used by a manufacturer is harder than it should be (looking at you Westcott) resulting in my spending a bunch of unnecessary $$$ buying some until I got good ones that fit correctly
• the nuts that roll or twist in do not have as much engagement with cross bar channel as the type that slide in the from the end and may not be strong enough for a particular use
• most of the current rack offerings that use extruded channels are limited to 1/4" or 6-7mm fasteners due to channel width. I'd much rather use 5/16' as I was doing with the steel bars. I routinely run a roof basket and fully load it and really don't like all this being secured by 1/4" screws
• if you are putting screws *down* through whatever you're mounting into t-nut, you need to pay attention to length (either cut or use washers) so they tighten sufficiently before bottoming in the extruded channel. If are running fasteners upward from the cross bars, you need to load carriage bolts into the end of the cross bars or use threaded studs that tread into the t-nuts and get nylocks on the topside of what you're mounting
• the aluminum extruded bars I have now offer a LOT more flex than the LFD steel ones when loaded up. They come *mighty* close to my roof.

For those people that want to permanently mount stuff to the roof, the above may not be a big concern. In our case, we change up the configuration all the time depending on what we're doing. I run a big ski box in winter, an open basket in summer for camping, and various other minor setups when needed throughout the year. Changing configurations is easier and faster for me with slotted cross bars.

Some things for you to consider.

Jason

 

incredible information! And thank you because I greatly appreciate it!

I think I am going to go with the steel version and see how it treats me.

 

Good analysis. But… holy smokes, how much stuff are you putting up there, that you'd bend the extruded bars?