Midas Cars Forum - www.midascarsforum.com

Has anyone ever thought of making a roof rack for the Convertible? In order to fix my surfboard to my convertible I need to have a sort of bar above the windscreen. I was thinking of making something that fits in the holes of the soft top fixings. Has anyone tried this?
Cheers, Hans

Would the inflatable ones be any good Hans?

Hi Rich,
I have no idea what you mean. Can you give me a link or a pic.?
This evening I have been playing with a piece of rod, nuts, washers and bolts. But the hole in the fixing is quite awkward.
Cheers, Hans

This sort of thing.. http://www.rip101.com/product/HandiRack-Inflatable-Roof-Rack-35024.aspx

I'm assuming you are wanting to leave the roof in place?

Rich

Hans,

Thats easy (assuming that you are thinking of using this setup without roof on......)

Get a soft top header rail moulding off Alistair, a couple of spare handles and build up a little mould above that.

Im assuming you will use roll over to secure rear.

Job done...and should look fit for purpose too.

Cheers,

David

Hi Rich and David,
The idea is to leave the soft top off. These inflatable things won't work on a soft top I suppose.
Indeed the roll over bar with a bit of foam around it will be used as the aft roof rack bar. For the front it should be as simple as possible. A complete soft top front molding with handles seems a bit overengineered to me. It should be possible to have just a alu or steel bar with 2 brackets that click inside the holes of the fixings. I already worked out a simple way to fasten the brackets with standard nuts and bolts, but it requires spanners to fasten en loosen. Would be much easier if it would be a handle type. But the standard handles won't work without the moulding.
I have to pick up a surfboard this week I just bought, so it has to do for the moment. But if anyone knows a standard DIY item that could be used, I'd be interested.

Hans, you may remember that I used to own convertible number 1, and when I got it the hood locking arrangement was next to useless. After some hunting around I found some long Dzus clips that worked really well and locked the front edge of the hood down really tight. If you can track some down they would be ideal, I would have thought, to mount the small bar that you are talking about and far better than a nut an bolt with only a quarter turn to lock them in place.

Thanks Colin. That looks promising. Another idea is how my camera is fastened to its tripod.

Not sure that a camera tripod would take the load

No, not the tripod, but the way the camera is bolted down. It´s very simple and all done by hand. It´s a special bolt and collar nut. The bolt goes into the bottom of the camera and the nut pulls it down on the pivot bracket.
But first tomorrow I´ll make a quick and dirty setup to get the surfboard home and hope it doesn´t start flying on the highway.