Welded Toyota 4Runner Roof Rack, DIY

Originally I was looking to purchase a Gobi Stealth or Baja roof rack for a Toyota 4Runner (5th Gen). The factory crossbars are pretty much useless because they are too low and too far back. Decided to build my own to save some cash and because it seemed like an easy and fun project. In the end I probably spent about $200-300 on metal, high quality, auto paint and primer, and some consumables for the welder. It took a long time to build because I had no plans really and was just looking at photos of racks on vehicles online to decide what I wanted to do. Spent quite a bit of time reworking things I didn't like as I went a long too.

This video will probably only be helpful on a conceptual level if you are wanting to build your own roof rack and are the mechanical type that doesn't need detailed instructions for every step. I've sort of just covered the basics and included important pieces of info, while keeping it non specific enough that you could adapt the plans to whatever vehicle you have. I also shot this across a span of about 10 days, so I am a bit redundant here and there in my explanations.

Good luck. If you have questions I'll try to answer them in the comments.

Here is a link to the universal crossbars I bought on Amazon. They seem pretty solid and are a lot less than some of the ones you can buy from Gobi or the other off road rack companies.

http://amzn.to/2hljyBG