A lot goes into the design and research process of building up a set of racks for your 4WD, and whilst any old rack can do the job there are plenty of factors that can determine whether it will survive or fail on the toughest tracks around.

Many brands tout their 4WD racks as being expedition ready and whilst offering plenty of aftermarket accessories and features specific to their specific brand, whilst appearing to tick a lot of boxes these racks don’t always cut it when your are  up mud creek without a paddle!

MODULARITY

In our opinion you can forget trendy modular racks – These are the style that utilise “branded accessories” that lock into proprietary grooves in the rack, forcing you to purchase their particular branded accessories – whilst in the showroom these systems are very tidy, the limitations are immense. And you will find those “easy to fit” brackets aren’t 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.

If you have gone down the route of the new modular style racks, you may find that moving the modular attachment points is inconvenient and depending on the fit of the attachments will significantly slow down the time it takes to efficiently pack gear onto your roof.

There are 2 main styles of modular rack, lateral crossbars and longitudinal, the lateral style tend to be more noisy and require wind deflectors to reduce the sound, and longitudinal, these racks are hard to mount things on and often require proprietary fasteners to complete the job complicating the matter!

With the mesh base variety like the Steel Racks 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 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!