More goes into researching and design for a set of roof racks on your vehicle than you could imagine.

Building up a set of roof racks for your 4WD, might seem like an easy job and whilst any old Roof Rack might seem like it is up to the task, there are plenty of factors that can determine whether it will survive or whether it will fail on the toughest tracks in Oz!

Many brands advertise their roof racks as being 4WD trip ready and whilst offering plenty of aftermarket accessories and features, these racks don’t always cut it when you are up a muddy creek without a paddle!

When shopping for a roof rack, the word modular is something that gets thrown around a lot in marketing and generally it refers to the ability to upgrade and modify something easily, but this doesn’t just apply to the “modular” style of roof racks, the Adventure Kings Steel Roof Rack Range as well as the Adventure Kings Aluminium Roof Rack both are incredibly versatile, and 100% modular depending on your trip away.

Generally speaking most competitors “modular units” are designed to utilise “branded accessories” that quickly lock into proprietary grooves in the racks, forcing you to purchase their particular branded accessories which can be limiting in the bush – whilst in the showroom these systems appear very tidy, the limitations in the field by being 100% proprietary are immense.

And you will find those “easy to fit” brackets aren’t always that easy to change on the go if you have extra cargo to add along the tracks and will limit how you pack without the plethora of tie down points you can find on the ‘mesh base’ style of roof rack.

Alternatively Adventure Kings offers a durable and incredibly strong range of  Steel Roof Racks  that are available at 4WD Supacentre they are so much easier to load up, offering plenty of built in tie down locations and as a bonus, custom mounts for fastening specific bits of gear are easy to fabricate for those who are handy with some tools!

Often in the real world the lower priced is not actually a compromise with the more versatile style racks being available for much, much less than the more proprietary designs that are emerging on the market!

Mounting Options

Regardless of the design you choose, most racks offer unbelievable strength with horizontal cross bars reinforcing the load carrying capability. Some racks like the Steel Full Length Rack from 4WD Supacentre have been tested to carry 500KG easily!

With the rack itself being one of the strongest components in the system many designers find that the most common point of failure in a Roof Rack is often the mounting feet, which occurs during lateral loading on rugged terrain.

Depending on your 4WD you will usually be limited to around 1 style of rack mounting option. This can be from something as simple as a U-bolt around your factory fitted sports rails. Or as complex as getting professionally fitted purpose made mounts permanently fastened to the roof of your vehicle.

4WD Supacentre have made sure their roof rack mounting points meet the Australian Standard AS 1235-2000. This standard uses a test that ensures a solid fixed point is made on the vehicle, without bolts breaking or the rack sliding or moving.

By being able to rely on your roof racks to carry the load ensures you have a great trip away regardless of the weather!

 Load

You need to asses what kinds of loads you intend on carrying on the roof of your vehicle this should include any maximum possible load including the weight of fuel inside your jerry cans, and the weight of the gas inside your gas bottles, as well as bedding in roof top tents etc.

For legality and safeties sake making sure your roof racks are loaded to less than your vehicles maximum load rating is very important, and by simply fitting a rack that can carry plenty of weight doesn’t increase your vehicles load carrying capacity.
Make sure that you are getting a setup that is more than capable for what you are doing and where you are going, by under equipping your 4WD you will never be able to ask more from your rack!

With so many roof rack options available there is no reason to not head to www.4WDSupacentre.com.au call our expert team on 1800 88 39 64 or drop into one of our stores to see the range of roof racks on display and find out just how easily they can be mounted up to your 4WD.