I have been looking for KK roof bars, but I've been a bit disappointed in how much they cost and the general lack of equipment for sale on Craigslist for the KK. Most KKs were sold without roof bars, so the junkyard isn't going to be much help either. Even the used Yakima and Thule stuff is out of my budget.
I'm seriously considering making my own roof bars, and I've gone through just about every post on the subject here and on Jeepforum. There are a lot of different good ideas out there, and many people have found ways to make this work for under 50 bucks. That's my goal as well. I picked up a good used steel roof basket from a LOST member recently, and plan to mount it to these bars.
Here's what I have in mind for the installation. Feel free to comment on the design, as I'm looking for constructive feedback at this point.
The bars:
I think I will use 1&1/4 inch conduit. People say conduit is significantly quieter than the square unistrut bars, the other cheap option at Home Depot. It's also less expensive than galvanized pipe, and I've read that the 1&1/4 inch conduit has been used successfully many times and can handle the weight. The open ends of the conduit need to be plugged or these will be very noisy on the highway. Some people have used corks. Any other ideas? I will bedline the bars to make them look good.
Mounting:
It seems hard to find a simple and elegant solution here. Most people use U-bolts, and the common solution is to drill the roof bar and use a U bolt around the side rail with the threaded ends pointed up. I see two potential issues here. One is that the threaded end of the U bolt can scratch the cargo or the person loading it. The other issue is that the side rails on the KK are not parallel (I read that they are closer together at the rear of the vehicle than at the front) so having fixed width mounting holes on the roof bars means that they can only be used in a single location on the side rails (no sliding the crossbars forward or back, or at least not much).
I've been brainstorming a better way of mounting the crossbars to the side rails that eliminates the problems mentioned above. See my drawing below. I would need twice as many U-bolts as the typical design, but when secured this way, the bars can still be adjusted forward and back. Also, no drilling is required and the sharp metal threaded bolt ends are pointed down. I would need some sort of rubber material between the roof bars and the siderails to keep the bars from slipping. Has anybody tried anything like this? If so, how well has it worked? If it doesn't work, what was the problem? Thanks for the feedback!
Reinstated by posting pic's;):)