Easy way to lift off my ARB roof rack

Why not have four ropes hanging down with hooks on the ends. Have them a foot above the rack and when you unbolt the rack, just lift the front up and hook the front ropes on, then do the same with the back. Rus.

Pulleys system is all the go, but you need one thing... registration.

You need to have the vehicle in EXACTLY the right spot, each & every time, to attach / remove.
This is easily achieved by attaching a tennis ball to a pre-set length of cord, which hangs down from the ceiling of your shed, and you stop when it touches the windscreen of you vehicle.

The other thing to do, is to have as much lifting length as you can muster, as this will give more leeway in lateral movements if the vehicle is not straight. this is obviously governed by the height of your shed roof.

Having a pulley in each corner, which is operated separately, will give he most control. You can have them all tying off near each-other, so you can stand in one position, and gently lower each corner in succession. This can also allow for some moderate lateral control, if again, your vehicle is not parked straight.

All very cheap & easy work. All can be done thru your local hardware store. Try to buy pulleys, instead of eyebolt rings, as this makes the lifting a whole lot easier, because of the reduced friction under load.

Cheers

Wolfie

We have the same roof rack with a Howling Moon awning down the left side. When we did some extensions a couple of years ago we put two eye bolts into the roof of the carport, 1800 mm apart. We hang a pulley from each. A mounted pair of pulleys on the side wall and a tie off anchor on the same wall come next in the system. Following the line from the side pulleys through past the tie off cleat and down the driveway about 10 metres brings you to a discretely placed pulley bolted into a concrete block at the edge of the garden. When its time to take the rack off, it is tied to ropes that come to it via the cleat, twin side pulleys and the roof pulleys. I then run the winch cable out to the garden pulley and back to the rope. Unbolt the rack and while one person carefully guides the rack so it does not swing or over balance to one side, the other person operates the winch and pulls it clear of the car. When it is clear the rope is tied off. This can be a bit tricky as you can only do it by taking the weight of the rope and tying off without letting it slip. If you are good with knots you can use a rolling hitch on a second rope to ty it off or you can attach second ropes to the main one between the cleat and the side pulleys by using alpine butterfly knots. The car is run forward, the slack taken up in the winch and then the winch is used to lower it to the ground. I've never actually weight it, but it is heavy so be careful. Have fun.

Shoulda asked me yesterday Andrew, just bought a $99 electric boat winch from Supacheep. 2 pulleys and a jumper lead connection and mine up in the roof of the carport, 10 m of lead to the switches should be the go.

Should have asked me yesterday as well, because I could have waxed lyrical all afternoon about the genius engineered system I R&D'd in my garage to get the Howling Moon Roof Top Tent off and on those factory fitted 'mothers' of ski bars/side rails on the JEEP.

I just used a manual Boat winch, pulleys and some web straps (four cnrs)to connect the whole she-bank to the centre hook.

Put a couple of yellow boxes on the floor with yellow road marking paint and the rest is a now a 'portion of urine' as they say.

I have a pulley system and I use my winch with the cable running through a snatchblock and on to the pulley system. 4 D shackles attach to the roof rack attached to one cable and one pulley and when the rack touches the roof beams of the garage, I tie it on with ratchet type straps. Takes about ten minutes to do the job.

I did this to test the difference in fuel consumption with rack on and off. The difference was negligible and so the roof rack stays on the truck.

When you going on holiday again???????? lol

Andrew,

When I picked up the Troopie the previous owner put the roof rack on by using the Hiab on the back of his work truck. Not possible for everyone but it was very easy.

Wayne

I use a boat winch and 4 eyebolts in the roof beams, four lengths of parramatta rope and four metal hooks on the ends to lift the shippshape on and off the loadrails.
Loadrails can then be unbolted and stuck in the corner.

goodday all
you lot are lucky to have roofs ?? high enough to lift it off i slip a very thick rug under the rack undo all the bolts for the brackets then remove all brackets leaving the rack sitting on the roof on the thick rug we then slide it over the back of the patrol and carry it to the back yard for storage until needed

steve

I used a similar system to that described by Dr Jim.

The difference is that I used a winch with an auto clutch. I can wind it up and let go and the load will stay where it is. Then to get it down I wind the winch in the opposite direction.

This allows me to control very carefully how the load moves. I used this setup to lift the camper part of the Trak Shak on and off the trailer. This required great accuracy but was relatively easy to do.

I used a nylon line for the winch cable, sourced from the yachting fraternity the pulleys came from the yachting world as well. It is all rated well in excess of what I need and by shopping around was much cheaper than I could get from the engineering/hoisting/storage supplies where I got the winch.

Also get your pulleys as high in the roof as you can as this makes it easier to steer the load down into the right spot when you are trying to refit the roofrack. Mine were hung from the ridge. I pulled what I was lifting up hard against the (ceiling) joists which stopped it moving. I then clamped it in place so it was not hanging on the winch.

Duncs