Deck for a Roof Rack

Bloke who I bought it off offered me a made-to-measure chequerplate deck for it for about £50 IIRC. If you are interested I could dig out his details (maybe!) and send them on. He was in Hinkley.

Sounds good - would be less trouble than I'm planning on.

If you could I'd appreciate it - the address above is a real one if you want to mail me.

P.

:-[ We spent over an hour hanging about the visitor centre, thought it must have been cancelled and went home in the end Drop the trousers to email me :-)

Does anybody know what a sensible price for 3mm checkerplate is? I phoned my local aluminium stockist and got quoted £183+VAT for an 8x10 4mm sheet which is a bit dear.

I'm now looking at bonding 3mm checkerplate to 6mm outdoor grade ply and pop rivetting the whole sandwich to the roofrack now.

P.

In article , Paul S. Brown writes

I've been thinking of doing the same on Marge (she has a full-cabin-length Brownchurch) I intend to use 3/8" ply - plenty strong enough, hold it on with jubilee clips (running through narrow, router-cut slots in the ply, I expect), and crucially stop around 18" or

I've found there's a phenomenal updraft caused by air sliding up off the windscreen, that's very good at lifting panels at any sort of speed, especially in a headwind. I'm hoping that far back the airflow may be reasonably laminar flow and horizontal. If not, I'll add some 1" square section to the bottom of the leading edge of the board, to create a vortex and some turbulence, and stiffen it a bit (the idea is for the edge to line up with a roof-rack cross-member).

That would work too (I'm lazier).

Regards,

Simonm.

In article , Paul S. Brown writes

Sounds good, but how much weight will that be up top? You could use some of the marine non-slip paint, or the poor man's version which is sprinkling sand on it whilst it's still wet. It wouldn't add appreciably to the weight.

Personally, I don't mind when I have to carry stuff up there, but I can't see the point of causing any more rolling than I have to otherwise.

Regards,

Simonm.

Hi Paul,

Don't have his email address any more, but you can find him on ebay under 'letsgooffroad'. I bought the rack exactly a year ago, so there's every chance he's got rid of it by now. He wanted (IIRC) £50 at the time...

Cheers

Thats Paul off Mud-Club - you can send him a msg here

Take the rubbish out to email me!

In article , Gromit writes

Well, I suppose you're right. I've still got the bars on the sides and I use webbing tie-downs that can be tightened pretty well. I'm hoping to fit the 'decking' it in removable sections - the main use is as a photography platform, so it won't be needed all the time.

Alternative "B" is to fit it just to a patch in the centre, so that I've still got the outer bars to tie down to.

Alternative "C" eagerly awaited...

Regards,

Simonm.

Daft question, but when you add the ply to the roofrack, you've no way of tying stuff on to the rack, other than using the rails at the side? I'd love a platform of somesort on mine, be nice to kip up there, but I need to be able to tie stuff on too.

Gromit Brownchurch on a 110

For mine I was planning on cutting ovals in the deck at around 18" spacing just over the bars so that I can reach the bars to lash down - you could also bolt lashing eyes to the deck itself.

P.

Do you need both?

I would go for ply as the cheap option but varnish it well, but maybe the luminum for choice.

Depends on your rack I suppose.

Then there is always hardboard, or whatever you can salvage from a skip.

I just climmy up the ladder and balance as best I can, bugger the need for a platform :)

Mind you I am not a heavyweight.

You can get some pretty substantial camera clamps, designed for pro video equipment, that could attach to the roofrack. I know a guy who bought one to attach to a traction engine.

As for me I have used my video camera attached to the dash with no more than a cheap Jessops clamp, and it worked pretty well for what I wanted.

Before that I used to video holding a camera out of the drivers door in a

Neat, but it won't work for my application: I'd either go through the roof with the spike on the tripod leg, or tip £,000 of camera gear over the edge! Always been accident-prone :(

You have given me an idea though - You could probably get a maillon rapide to fit through two suitably small holes either side of a crossbar - it needs some experimentation...

Regards,

Simonm.

Back in january i paid £60 for an 8x4 ft sheet of 3mm ally chequer. Came from a local place (stoke-on-trent) and they were very nice!

Across the road from them was a place with a metal guilotine. They carried my sheets to there on the forklift and i payed a fiver to have them cut to the sizes i wanted.

I covered the roof of my 101 in it. Tis nice and strong (and more importantly watertight!) now

On or around Tue, 7 Sep 2004 21:45:32 +0100, "Larry" enlightened us thusly:

horrid stuff. Old caravans are made of it inside, and it absorbs the damp like a thing that absorbs damp, and thereafter bows out of shape or falls apart or both.

MDF is quite handy but tends to be heavy, and I don't know how waterproof it really is.

Not at all. It's OK on the inside (I used MDF to make a bulkhead shelf/speaker mount for the 90 that lasted quite well) but exposed to the elements it will swell and go nasty. Not sure if you could weatherproof it with varnish. It takes varnish well, but I think you'd be doing it every few months. Advantages are that it's easily worked and very stable under normal moisture conditions, but sitting on top of a Landy roof is hardly that.

It's pretty good on the whole. It will absorb water and warp a little, but it dries out again quite quickly.

I know this from the stack of 8x4 sheets that ended up sitting outside my house for a couple of months after the wind picked them up and put enough holes in them that they were useless for my needs,

I suspect varnished MDF would actually be pretty water resistant.

Howsabout something a little more esoteric and using GRP coated hardboard - use the hardboard as a form, the GRP is actually the structure. Should be reasonably light by the time you're finished and water resistant.

Why not just use decorative faced ply? You can get ply these days with some very nice facings on them (Oak, Beech, Cherry as the outer layer)

P.