New Gecko Rack!!!!!! NEW PICS added

WoodysKJ · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 9:06 am

Answers to the first two questions:

Yes it does still fit in the garage, 2 inches (+,-) to spare.

And the winch is in the garage also and is waiting a few parts like a Yellow top, quick disconnect... to install.

Logan · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:00 am

Looks Great!! Nice Job

riptricket · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:27 am

wow looks solid and black! i really like it!

Jeep Dawg · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:39 am

Hey WoodysKJ;

Man looks awsome. You did a great job on that. I dig it.

WoodysKJ · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:01 am

Thanks all.

I am still a nervous wreck about the roof. But everything I did was thought out for a long time. I even went so far as to fill the inside of the gecko with silicone so that water could not find a path from the light and antenna grommets inside and through the roof hole. Maybe alittle overboard but I had alot of spare time until i thought of the canoe lift idea.

Sport · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:23 am

Wow, I am not usually a fan of the ARB but everything looks flawless on your jeep. just great, I love it.

jeepkj02 · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:45 am

Woody, Looks great. Awesome job on the install. You have one awesome KJ there.

dieselenthusiast · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 11:58 am

Very Nice!

WoodysKJ · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:05 pm

Sport wrote:

Wow, I am not usually a fan of the ARB but everything looks flawless on your jeep. just great, I love it.

Thanks. I liked the ARB but it is a huge chunk of steel, but when it is matched with the color of the KJ it doesn't look AS beefy.

WoodysKJ · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:08 pm

riptricket wrote:

wow looks solid and black! i really like it!

It is solid. This beast is all solid Rock Lizard Steel and has the weight to prove it. 60 lbs without the powdercoating, ligeths wire CB antenna and cable, not to forget the silicone inside.....

Oh and the RockLizardFabrications.com sticker on the driver's side. I bet that alone weighs 3 lbs......

daspes · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:22 pm

WoodysKJ wrote:

Oh and the RockLizardFabrications.com sticker on the driver's side. I bet that alone weighs 3 lbs......

It adds 10 HP and 5 MPG too...

WoodysKJ · **Posted:** Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:39 pm

daspes wrote:

WoodysKJ wrote:

Oh and the RockLizardFabrications.com sticker on the driver's side. I bet that alone weighs 3 lbs......

It adds 10 HP and 5 MPG too...

In both of our's dreams.....

It just looks good, that's all. Kind of like my best friends wife.....

WoodysKJ · **Posted:** Thu Mar 20, 2008 8:25 am

Okay,

Maybe I am Jinxing this, but...

after 2 days of HEAVY rainfall (somewhere around 3 - 5 inches in the area, I hear) I can say that there are NO runs, drips or errors.

The BF hole in my roof for the wires MIGHT be sealed up, so far.

Now to get the CB antenna tuned and working as good as it should.

dieselenthusiast · **Posted:** Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:08 am

WoodysKJ wrote:

Okay,

Maybe I am Jinxing this, but...

after 2 days of HEAVY rainfall (somewhere around 3 - 5 inches in the area, I hear) I can say that there are NO runs, drips or errors.

The BF hole in my roof for the wires MIGHT be sealed up, so far.

Now to get the CB antenna tuned and working as good as it should.

Now I'm debating between the factory light bar or a set up similar to yours. Either way, I will be drilling a big hole. Can you swivel (pivot) your lights downward so they would be somewhat tucked away in hopes to save some fuel economy when you aren’t using them?

WoodysKJ · **Posted:** Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:12 pm

I am sure there are lights that will "Swivel" but these will not adjust that much. I am not concerned about the 1/2 mile per gallon I might be loosing.

There is s huge difference between the factory light bar and what I have. First difference is about 500 watts. Second difference is this rack is made by a guy who knows what he is doing. It is built to work and take punishment. The facotry stuff, rack or light bar are cheap plastic imitations of quality. The weakest link of this whole set-up are the anchor points depending on the factory nutzerts and the 8 mm bolts.

I have NO hood glare like some experience with the factory light bar, or so I have heard. Very little wind noise at highway speeds. I just can not say enough about the RL Gecko Roof Basket.

I know Marty and Troy were very curious about my lighting and wiring set-up so I can tell them right now that so far all is GREAT!!!!!

Great job guys. Sorry it took me solong to get it on there.

dieselenthusiast · **Posted:** Thu Mar 20, 2008 1:50 pm

WoodysKJ wrote:

I am sure there are lights that will "Swivel" but these will not adjust that much. I am not concerned about the 1/2 mile per gallon I might be loosing.

There is s huge difference between the factory light bar and what I have. First difference is about 500 watts. Second difference is this rack is made by a guy who knows what he is doing. It is built to work and take punishment. The facotry stuff, rack or light bar are cheap plastic imitations of quality. The weakest link of this whole set-up are the anchor points depending on the factory nutzerts and the 8 mm bolts.

I have NO hood glare like some experience with the factory light bar, or so I have heard. Very little wind noise at highway speeds. I just can not say enough about the RL Gecko Roof Basket.

I know Marty and Troy were very curious about my lighting and wiring set-up so I can tell them right now that so far all is GREAT!!!!!

Great job guys. Sorry it took me solong to get it on there.

I was planning to use the Gecko Basket Rack anyway, so I might as well copy you on this one. :wink:

Between the RL rack/rail combo and your installation, this setup appears to be very clean. Honestly, I can't think of a better setup and a more efficient way to run the wiring while concealing the big daddy hole and all the wires.

WoodysKJ · **Posted:** Thu Mar 20, 2008 2:29 pm

dieselenthusiast wrote:

I was planning to use the Gecko Basket Rack anyway, so I might as well copy you on this one. :wink:

Between the RL rack/rail combo and your installation, this setup appears to be very clean. Honestly, I can't think of a better setup and a more efficient way to run the wiring while concealing the big daddy hole and all the wires.

Thank you. I am very pleased with the outcome. I will be honest, I was VERY nervous about the BF hole. 2007 KJ with 12,000 miles on her and I am drilling the grand canyon in her roof. I figured with a sun roof i am gonna have a leak anyway.

I am currently working out the details on the CB antenna mount. With the 2 ft antenna I have i am gettin on channel 1 2.5 swr, ch 19 1.3 swr and on 40 a 2.4 swr.

Not too bad, but I think I am going to switch to a 3 ft antenna just so I have more tuneability with it.

The set-up is very clean and that is what I wanted. I hate seeing electrical tape and wires flapping in the wind. I want it to look as good as Marty's efforts to make it like it really belongs there. I will in the future, when i break one off with a tree branch, switch the lights to some better PIAA's or maybe even some HID's but for now the 4 x 150 watt KC long range lights work great.

The one thing i did that you may not need to do is I ran both the positive and ground wires for the lights. so I had 8, 14 guage wires AND a fat coax running through the rack.

That much ground might be over kill, but I wanted each light to have enough power. Now if I ever change out to HID's or if someone was to do those instead then you would not need to have all that power up there. The HID's by design pull so much less amps that you could myabe get away with Just one 12 ga wire for all 4 lights as a common ground. But I would still have a dedicated ground for the lights.

Be sure to tell Marty you want to run the wires INSIDE and he will drill the necessary hole in the rack rail for you. I drilled the light and antenna holes as well as the one on the foot of the rack. Marty did the inside one before he welded it together.

Thanks again Marty.

WoodysKJ · **Posted:** Mon Mar 24, 2008 8:45 pm

Okay,

I think a final update on the Gecko rack.

Just installed a 3 foot FireFly fiberglass hand tuneable CB antenna. I had a 2 footer on there and was having issues getting a good SWR. raise and lower the tip a 1/16th of an inch and the SWR would go so far out of wack on one channel, and in the opposite direction on another.

The 3 footer allowed for more tuning surface area and thus could tune it in smaller increments.

After about 10 minutes of tuning I got a 2.0 swr on channel 1, an outstanding 1.0 on channel 19 and a respectable 2.2 on channel 40.

I am VERY happy with this and thus the light placement on the rack in proximity to the antenna mount seems to be great with little to no influence in the SWR.

So with a soild steel built like a work of art rack, 600 watts of lights and an antenna mount that seems to give a great ground plane and great SWR allowing for excellent radio/antenna tuning coupled with a fold down antenna mount, I can not say enough good things about the Gecko Roof Basket.

My ONLY wish is that I could have found a small enough 55 watt light to mount on two loose light tabs Marty sent me. I wanted to mount a pair of back-up lights between the rear cross bar and the roof of the KJ, but had no luck finding anything that would work. With LED technology advancing, it may be possible soon. But I could not find anything now.

New Gecko Rack!!!!!! NEW PICS added

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