A set of racks has quickly become the go to addition for just about any vehicle on the road, offering 4WDers, tradesmen and families the ability to carry stacks more gear to their vehicle, offering plenty of tie downs, and an easy way to add handy vehicle mounted accessories such as LED lightbars, LED Spotlights, Awnings, Reversing lights, and even a Roof Top tent.

Whilst racks are designed to increase the carrying capacity of a vehicle there are plenty more reasons that people are seeking out a set of quality racks to suit the roof of their vehicles

Reasons
Every individual has their reason for needing a quality roof rack on the top of their vehicle. Whilst many vehicles include plenty of internal storage space, bulkier items often have to be left behind for lack of internal space in your vehicle. A set of roof racks offers the perfect mounting location to temporarily expand your cargo carrying capacity.

A set of Steel Roof Racks offers the perfect location to fasten lightweight but bulky items that may cramp up the internal space inside a 4WD or SUV, things like Swags, gazebo’s and even things like your folded up mesh flooring, Awning tents and other large items that fail to easily fit inside the back of your 4WD.

Ratings

A roof racks weight rating can be a little bit ambiguous and without knowing what it is you are looking at you will find them a little bit misleading. With manufacturers being permitted to test and rate their own racks, you’ll find the ratings given are often anemic and due to the lightweight construction of many racks shouldn’t ever be exceeded.

The ratings of all roof racks sold in Australia have to abide by the Australian Design Rules for roof racks, the standard is called AS1235-2000, ignore the numbers, the standard, has a handful of rules to make sure that roof racks are safe and worthy of accreditation.

The roof racks undergo a rigorous slide resistance test both forward and at 20° to the longitudinal axis and also a lift test to determine how well the roof racks can hold the load to the roof of your vehicle, these tests are performed by an independent 3^rd party NATA (National Association of Testing Authorities) accredited laboratory for the most impartial test results.

The steel racks available at 4WD Supacentre offer up to 500Kg of load carrying capacity, obviously this is just the strength of the racks and the mounting brackets, and will not increase your vehicles load carrying capacity, or strengthen your roof, so always check your manufacturers details to ensure you don’t risk damaging your vehicle, overloading your roof, or endanger vehicles that are following you.

Safety

The testing and load ratings issued for the Steel Roof Racks are designed to offer a safe and stable foundation for your accessories, however your vehicles roof load limit is established for a reason, and whilst your 4WD offers plenty of space to mount your 4WD accessories, by overloading your roof you’ll find that any situation such as fast cornering maneuvers on the road or heavy ruts that put your 4WD through tough side to side undulations you may find your center of gravity is lifted quite high resulting in an unstable ride, and increasing the likelihood of your 4WD to topple, regardless of your load carrying capacity on the roof line.

As mentioned earlier, it is a very wise idea to stick to your manufacturers recommended load limit, and with additions like big tyres and a lift kit, you will find that your 4WD already has a much higher center of gravity to contend with.

Options

Whilst many roof rack manufacturers offer 1 or 2 varieties, and only offer the ability to mount them using proprietary and expensive cross bars, which offer a lighter load carrying capacity. With the range available at 4WD Supacentre, you can choose between a Full Length Style Roof Rack, Steel Roof Rack 3/4 Length, Steel Roof Rack 1/2 Length, Steel Single Cab Roof Rack. All five of these steel roof racks, offer a heavy-duty steel construction with a wrap around bar for helping to secure your gear easily within the wrap around bar.

The other options include the Steel Tradies Racks which have 2 side rails to help prevent building materials from rolling off either side of the rack, they also include a free front and rear, which allows all even longer lengths of PVC piping, timber, and steel to be strapped down protruding out of the front and rear of the vehicle.

There is a model that has been specifically designed with a roof top Tent in mind, featuring a front wrap around bar, but a flat rear section allowing for mounting a standard roof top tent in nearly any orientation you could imagine. Meaning it can be setup to fold out the rear, or either side of your vehicle. Whilst still being able to carry extra cargo.

The Final design on the table is the range of flat racks, these are the best of all worlds, whilst offering a flat surface for mounting nearly any of the roof top tents, construction materials, bulky gear like swags, and Gazebo’s whilst still offering easy locations to mount your Awnings, LED lights or UHF radio antenna.

The benefit of the flat rack is the increased roof clearance for underground carparks, and less aerodynamic interference.

Accessories

With a range of 4WD specific aftermarket accessories that rely in having a roof rack system fitted to your vehicle, it makes sense to have a level of modularity, this is why all Adventure Kings accessories, use bolts and clamping plates to fasten to your roof racks, this setup typically fastens easily to either side of the mesh base of the rack, and with the clamping plate fastens easily to the base of your roof rack.

This is how the Adventure Kings Awnings included installation kit fastens to your rack system, the Adventure Kings Jack and shovel holder, and the Adventure Kings Roof Top Tents also takes advantage of this mounting mechanism as it is simple yet extremely strong.

Construction

All 4WD Roof Racks must be built tough, this is why our whole range is built from extremely tough powder coated steel the diameters of the steel tubing chosen could have been smaller, and the wall thickness thinner, however the design of these racks was intended for some serious use on the tracks.

After the designs were set out, we gave them to the best people we know who could test them, the 4WD Action crew, the team took our racks on DVD and some photoshoots, to some of the most remote tracks in Australia, including the Victorian High country, Cape York, south west Tassie, the Glasshouse mountains and even across the Simpson desert!

Quality

With the whole range of racks being monitored closely for a quality build construction, the attention to detail is extremely high, coated with an E-coated powder coating, the whole rack system offers one of the best value setups on the market.

However if there is ANYTHING wrong with your rack with regular and appropriate usage, all gear sold at 4WD Supacentre offers a 12 month warranty on material and manufacturing defects, just for extra piece of mind.

Even though there are many rack systems on the market, some costing well in excess of $1000, you will find that the performance offered by the Steel Roof Rack systems available at 4WD Supacentre are some of the best performing and most cost effective racks in the entire market!