104 Surco Three Sided Aluminum Roof Rack for Full-Size Vans; Bright Dip Finish

HERE’S A FIX THAT WILL REALLY IMPROVE THE STRENGTH OF THE HOLLOW TUBES this company uses in both their roof racks:I agree that these seem a bit flimsy and could bend if stressed too much and I found a way to add a good amount of strength to these hollow aluminum poles is to remove the plastic ends with a screw driver and some wiggling.Then insert long wood dowels (about $3 each) inside the poles! It doesn’t have to be a hard wood either.Dry fit first and cut to length and leave some room to reinstall the plastic end plugs and of course the straight dowels won’t fit into the curved pipe angles but that’s just a small area anyway.Just take one of the pipes with you to a big hardware store to their wood dowel section often in their wood trim isle and find the best fit. If the dowel is just a bit too big you can spend time using a belt sander to whittle it down but the easier thing to do is buy the smaller size dowel that fits and as you slide it into the pipe, coat the wood dowel with a wood filler paste or a house caulking, just a simple water clean up type is easy to work with.The caulk will fill in the gap so the pipe is filled with the dowel and caulk snugly and also smear the filler/caulk onto the cut wood ends to preserve the wood.Now you will find that the pipe is double as rigid and flexes half as much I think you’ll be satisfied with the strength.Of course the wood dowel could weather and rot if moisture leaks in over time but I think it might be many decades before this is significant.I’ve used this same method on bathroom towel bars, they are ridiculously flimsy and so anymore I buy long grab bars and use them as a heavy duty double duty towel bar.I didn’t get any instructions for placement of the brackets so I laid it on a flat surface and played with the bracket placements and strategized the best placement for overall strength.Of course yes you may have to consider where the roof has underneath cross members of support that ideally the brackets should be placed over if the roof is flimsy and if you can access the underside of the roof and strengthen it if needed would be great as well as using a high quality sealing caulk on the screw protrusions.If your roof isn’t strong enough/isn’t designed to hold weight, you might want to pass on these roof racks.When mounting I used some gorilla double sided 1″ wide mounting clear tape and placed this under the feet to help seal and protect the paint.On some vehicles like my 96 ford van, the roof isn’t very strong because excessive weight is supposed to be carried on the roof edge/rain gutters which I do have a ladder holding rack that attaches there.But it’s nice to have a stronger roof for putting your foot on while getting things up and down.So I went to the salvage junk yard and took the time to remove some extra roof cross member supports and added them to my van interior roof. I was able to sawzal with a metal cutting blade cut the ends off the cross members so these will fit above the wall edges since the walls don’t have places for extra members and screwed or riveted the ends in place.I had to take out the headliner but I’m recovering it anyway.I also found that I could add more support for my sheet metal roof perimeter edges by filling the gabs with something ridgid/foam where perimeter vertical walls sheet metal structure isn’t quite touching/supporting the underside of the sheet metal roof.Yes it takes time and patience but it’s a bit like a video game where you have to figure things out and work at it to get through it but it’s much more rewarding to build something for real instead of playing a video game that gets deleted when turned off.Take care!