jscherb

When the company that's doing many of my hardware designs saw the JK Safari Cab, they wanted to use it in their SEMA booth to show off the hardware products. Unfortunately they had booked their booth months ago and it wasn't large enough for a vehicle and they couldn't change it, so they couldn't use the Jeep in the booth this year. They decided to feature the Jeep in the booth anyway:



The photo is pretty much life-size. The Jeep has the side mount jerry can holders, the tailgate reinforcement and hinges, a spare-mount carrying an ammo can, and the hinge-mount jack carrier.

2qik2see

Now that's cool.. Congrats!!

jscherb

Another photo from SEMA today - the JK tailgate reinforcement and HD hinges featured in the new product area:

jscherb

Thanks. It's definitely fun to see things you've designed and built at the SEMA Show .

karls10jk

Those look familiar! Quite pleased you do what you do.

jscherb

The company is also showing these upcoming products and handing out this flyer on them (I've blurred the company info in this image):

2qik2see

Can you pm me the company info on these storage options? I am needing something like this ASAP! Havn a JK..I need all the storage I can get!!

LoboMike

Sorry to go off-topic and bring this back up Jscherb, but I just picked up an old roof rack off an XJ at my local junkyard to throw on my JK in time for winter. One thing I've noticed is that the Control Towers that are connected to the Crossbars are kind of 'loose' after removing them from the XJ. This makes it somewhat difficult to know exactly how much spacing to leave between the two tracks. Since you've done a couple of these, do you happen to know how much distance you left, side-to-side, between the tracks? I should have had a tape measure with me and measured it on the XJ, but of course, I forgot, and I just want to ensure I don't make it too narrow or wide to bind up the crossbars if I need to slide them forward or backward.

In regards to the stress on the fiberglass, another user did a write-up on here and used some 3/4" x 1/8" flat bar on the underside of his roof to help distribute the load. Although some brackets like you've created would work even better, he seems to have had good success with it, so I'm going to do the same: https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/jk-s...rd-top-251084/. Worst comes to worst, after a while it cracks and hopefully by then, your Safari top is on the market and I have an excuse to buy a new hardtop!

jscherb

If I recall correctly, the stock spacing for the rack rails is 47" on center of the bolt holes. The proper spacing keeps the crossbar brackets snug, so probably your spacing is different and that's why yours are loose.

LoboMike

Thanks for that info. While I haven't mounted it yet, I was test fitting the assembled rack on the hardtop and there's an issue with the spacing. The problem is that 47" on center puts the rails right on the edge of the ribs. As you can see in the picture below (which I borrowed from another user who installed one on their hardtop), in order to fit the rails with the factory crossbars, you have to extend the crossbars slightly beyond 47". This means that less bearing area is being taken up by the connection between the channel adapters and the plastic piece that connects to the inside of the crossbars, and that's something I definitely don't want to do.



That being said, I think my options are to either A) Cut the overall Length of the Crossbar to place the roof rails on top of the thicker section of the hardtop and drill 2 new holes for the plastic adapters (cheap, route) or B) Place the roof rails in their proper location outside of the ribs and use the Surco Channel Adapters and Crossbars. I think I'll be opting for the latter. That being said, are the Surco Channel Adapters you have Surco P/N J100? The website just says "Jeep Adapter." Thanks again!