For a while now, we've had our eyes (OK - I've had my eyes - I don't think Jess really could care less!) on getting a roof rack for the Pathfinder. It's got the factory rails and cross-bars, but with only the two cross-bars you couldn't really put any camping gear up there. It was good for bringing timber, etc, home from Bunnings, but not much else.
Our two options were either a wire-mesh cage from SuperCheap for around the $180-$190, or to step up to a tube-style basket from Repco. The next step up is a proper vehicle-specific rack system from ARB/TJM/etc. No doubt these are very good, but the price of admission starts at around $1200 and goes rapidly up from there. Repco were advertising the Rola Vortex basket about 6 months ago for $300-ish, but it had since come down to $260RRP. We had a 20% off voucher for Repco, so decided that with the voucher, the better quality rack would be roughly the same price as the SuperCheap (ugly) one.
We ended up going down to Repco yesterday to have a look. They had one of the baskets on display, but it was obviously a returned unit that had been opened - the basket itself was not in it's box, and the mounting kit was opened and sitting in the basket, with the instructions taped to the outside of it. The salesman didn't really know anything about it, and tried to tell us that it was $370, since that's what the price ticket on the shelf said (despite the description being nothing like it).
Eventually we spoke to a more senior girl, who worked out that it WAS a returned item, which is why it wasn't showing up on the computer. Since it was also a discontinued line, they couldn't add it back in. She eventually told the bloke that we could have it for $200 if we'd like. We tried to use our 20% off voucher on that, but he wouldn't let us - it was worth a shot at any rate! So we paid the man, and carted it back home with us. Feeling very lucky that we went down when we did, instead of leaving it for another couple of weeks, which could have resulted in us not being able to get one at all.
I fitted it to the car yesterday afternoon. It necessitated moving the position of the cross-bars on the rack, which meant I also had to modify the awning mounting points to suit the new bar positions. My concern now is that the aluminium channel that the awning bolts to is supported on one end, and in the middle, leaving half of it's weight to hang forward from the front cross-bar. In normal driving this is probably going to be OK, but any offroading or corrugations will no doubt put a lot more strain on things, and may result in the aluminium cracking. I'm thinking that I'll probably need to reinforce the forward spar of the awning with another piece of aluminium square-section bolted on top of the existing length. But that's another project alltogether!
All in all I'm very happy with the new rack. It's built very solidly, and should be able to stand up to everything we'll throw at it. It will also make a very solid mounting point for a couple of spotties up on the roof.
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Tent fits up there nicely! This was one of the main things we were after, so that if it rains whilst we're camping, we don't need to pack up a wet tent and load it into the back of the wagon.
On the passenger side of the car, we made the cross-bars stick out a little further compared to the drivers side. This gives us heaps of room to mount the awning to this side of the car, and it nicely supports the rolled up tarp.
Whereas on the other side of the car, the cross-bars tuck nicely in underneath the rack.
All in all, very happy with how it's turned out!
