K, after alot of thinking and brainstorming (and determined not to spend $300 on our stock Yakima bars plus have to buy a basket etc lol), I decided to order a universal Rage Motorsports aluminum roof rack and see if I could "make" it fit our factory roof rails. I thought about using some universal raingutter style bars but most of them sat up ALOT higher than I wanted. So here is how my quest went:
I started by test fitting the rails across the top of the truck, turns out that you can't adjust the "clamps" in far enough for our roof rails. So I measured out the distance I needed plus the total width of the bars I wanted and started by taking apart the locking/clamping mechanism on the bars:
After taking them apart I also removed the rubber pads on the inside of the clamps:
After prepping the clamps I proceeded to shorten the total length of the bars and then I drilled a hole where I needed to "lengthen" the adjustment channel for the clamps and used a 4" cutoff wheel to cut the channel out to the drilled hole and just pulled up on the loose metal and bam, new adjusting channel!
I then took the clamp and had to modify the outer portion. It's designed to clamp around a stock roof rack and therefore was too thick to slip into the channel in our roof rail. I also had to cutout the ribs inside the clamp to give plenty of space to slide the clamp inside our roof rail opening:
and here is the bar test fitted on the roof! I also cut a channel on the inside of my roof rail for the inner clamp to slide into. Not sure if it would have been strong enough without doing this but I felt it would be alot stronger with it.
So here is the finished product!
After getting everything mounts and strapping my tire down I pushed and pulled on the roof basket with all my might and it felt strong and secure, just rocked my truck back and forth lol. I'll update this later on after some real-time road miles but I think if your willing to do a little modification, this would be a great alternative for the hard-to-find and expensive factory bars
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