Let's make a roof rack!
This was certainly the most challenging part of this project so far. I will show you step-by-step how I figured out how to make it and not totally screw it up.
First I made the front and rear hoops that bolt to the body.
Next I bent the top rails/tubes to the shape that I wanted and then joined them to the hoops. Obviously I could not do this on the body, so I had to figure out another way. First I took the rear hoop and used a magnet to position it at an angle to that the top rail was 90 degrees to the hoop when looking at the side AND overhead. I used another magnet up front to hold the rail tube in place for brazing.
The other side was easier since the fist side had one angle fixed. I just had to make sure that it was 90 degrees when looking from the top.
Now comes the tricky part...joining the front and rear hoops and geting the angles right. I started by bolting them back to the truck and marking where the rails intersected the front hoop. A little tweaking of the tubes may be needed to get them to the right spot, but it should not take much at all. Once the marks were made for the front tubes, I measured the distance between the mounting surfaces of the front and rear tubes at exactly the mounting point. I then transfered that measurement to the sheet metal piece that I do my brazing on and made two parallel lines. I then used the magnets to do a setup using those lines and brazed everything up.
This method worked really well, and everything bolted right back up to the truck perfectly. Even if it was a little off, you could tweak the tubes to get it just right.
Next I added some rails to make the bottom of the rack.
Finally I added some rails all around and added a sheetmetal support in the middle on each side. Adding the brace proved tricky and I had a little trouble getting it to braze in correctly, but eventually got it to work out. Should look good all painted up.
This was the first roof rack that I have done. It was pretty challenging, but I am happy with how it turned out. I may go back and add some light mounts to it somewhere (maybe at the front hoop) at some point.