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Ever see this hardtop rack before?

I`ve seen similar ones to it. My buddy had one like that on a 85 blazer, his was not home made.
 
max 02 said:
I`ve seen similar ones to it. My buddy had one like that on a 85 blazer, his was not home made.
Click to expand...
Any idea who makes it?
 
Pretty sure it was a safari option that was either made for some in house GM projects... Not a GM part per say, but it probably came on a few that were made specifically for dedicated rigs.
 
Pretty cool, looks like the mounting plates wrap under the top to give real support.
 
A guy I worked for years ago made one that was home brew. I think the only thing I would be worried about is it leaking along the seam that joins the cab, but I am sure you can compensate for that with a little extra weather stripping.
 
Weird. I was thinking about doing something like this last year, but ended up building a traditional style that just attaches to the roof. Part of the incentive was to build in like mini ladders front and back as hand-holds to make climbing up to get gear easier (like the one at the 1st Gen above). But the build complexity is like doubled and you end up with something harder to install and remove and in some cases hard to seal. If you're willing to commit to holes in the topper and consider the rack semi-permanent, I think that white one above would work well (you could mount to the roof and to the lower sides of the topper. For installing brackets between the bed-rail and topper, how to you do all of the following?
  • Don't scratch the bed-rail/body paint up
  • Seal everything
  • Keep the hard-top close enough to factory height that the seals along the cab still work (why I think double seals won't work to solve the 2 problems above.
You could do like the 1st photo pictured, silicone long topper brackets to the hardtop and relocate the topper seals to the bottom of the bracket. That should keep the topper height within 1/8" of stock. And you might as well because you have almost no chance to remove the topper while leaving the rack in place.

The 1st rack pictured seems like no good on its own, except to carry a canoe. Is the point to allow other standard rack systems to be installed on it?
 
All good points on how to keep it sealed up I'm not a big fan of having water come in.
I was looking to see if double sealing using factory style seals would work.
So you would end up having two seals one on the bottom of the top and then another one on the bottom of the rack mount
But then how far will that throw off your seal to cab ratio
I really like the concept because it is removable if you want to just use your top only. And if you want to go without your top and rack only that's kind of cool as well.
I originally had a dealer installed luggage rack on my top but I had them take it off and fill in the holes when I had the truck painted recently.
Hmmmmmmmmmm!
 
Sorry if it seems weird to ask this but wasn't this thread longer and have a few more pictures? I could have sworn I responded to part of the thread that had some potential hard top replacements... or was that another thread? Now I'm confused...
 
When I first got my blazer I looked for months at making a full safari type rack with ladders at each side on the back. I looked at most of the these same photos and came to the conclusion that sealing the topper back up would be quite the task. I would like to make a small rack above the cab connected to the gutters though. I was just looking for a place to put my spare tire cheaper then buying a rear bumper with tire carrier.
 
i was going to have some bars creatively bent on the inside to tie in a roof rack to hold some weight.
From the roll bar then tie into it
 
I'm looking into a rack like this to hold an RTT over my soft top. Good pics!

-Rob
 
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