TrailRax Roof Rack/Side Rack Install/Questions

SlashRacer

Looks FANTASTIC! I will be adding a couple of storage compartments as well.

What is this that the arrow is point to?

It's a grab handle. I have one on each side to make it a little easier to pull myself up to access the cargo boxes rather than grab the rack itself. They aren't necessary, but they were free when I ordered my TrailRax so I thought would would give them a try. I really like them and plan on keeping them on the rack. Plus my wife said they make it easier for her to access the cargo boxes too!

Dirt Dog

looks very nice ! Are you going to attach 2 gal Rotopaks ?

Thanks! Yes I plan on adding them soon.

Need some 2 door love in here. 😁

Quick review from me:

I ordered the TrailRax rack from the BN Gear Store during their holiday sale... and just got it install this past weekend.

The Good​

• Uses a standardized mounting mechanism. You can attach anything you want with some carriage bolts and nuts. This is unlike the factory roof rack that would require adaptor brackets and/or drilling for just about anything you wanted to mount.
• Uses the full length of the vehicle.
• The rack itself is very modular. If you don't need the side PakRax for that particular trip, you can take it off. If you don't need all of the cross bars, you can take most of them off.
• Relatively quiet on the road. All roof racks introduce some level of additional wind noise, just kind of the nature of the beast. Thanks to the wind deflector, the additional noise on the TrailRax rack is minimal.
• Supports light bars. I don't intend on using a light bar personally, but the option is there if you need it.

The Bad​

• My TrailRax kit was missing parts. This ended up not being a huge deal... @London and the folks at TrailRax got it sorted out, and I had the missing parts in-hand within a week. But I feel like I have to be fully transparent about it anyway.
• Both of the side rails were bent in a few spots. Not sure if it was damage from shipping or if they were shipped out that way, but nothing a mallet couldn't fix.
• The aluminum extrusions (the crossbars) were poorly cleaned up after the machining process. I had to take an air compressor to clean out all of the metal shavings to prevent any cross-threading. Again, not a huge deal, but since the rack is nearly $2000 your expectations are high.
• The entire kit uses SAE sizes for their fasteners (except for the one nut that interfaces with the Bronco). This is a personal pet peeve of mine. Doesn't it really matter? Admittedly... no, not really. But everything on the Bronco itself is metric, so it would be nice if all of the accessories on the Bronco were also metric. But in the end all it really means is I have to add on SAE sizes to my tool roll.
• It took me three days to install. Now to be completely honest, at lot of this was my ridiculous levels of stubbornness and has nothing to do with the rack itself. A lot was also because it was 28-34 degrees outside, and fingers don't work so well when they are cold. But most of all it was because I was installing this solo and had to MacGyver ways to install this without scratching/denting my Bronco. (Unfortunately my wife is only 4'11", so she is no help on these sorts of projects.) But, yes, in full transparency, it took me 3 days to install it. If you had a buddy that wasn't a midget, you could definitely do it in a day, but you should still give yourself a time budget 3-6 hours just in case.

PICTURE DUMP​

Day 1: installing the PaxRak support brackets—requires removing your hard top, which is insanely difficult to do solo by the way.

One of the bent rails—kind of hard to see in the photo but obvious in person.

Day 2 - Beginning the top rack assembly.

Installing the windshield:

All of the aluminum shavings left over from the machining process:

End of day 2. Most of the rack is there, but the crossbars and PakRax hasn't been installed yet. The green shopping bags were used to prevent scratches.

Channeling my inner @Calgecko
Start of day 3... greeting with a light dusting a snow.

And finished product:

RagnarKon

And finished product:

Looking good!

I had a my son help me. I assembled the whole rack before we put it on the bronco. Yes...there was some weight and we could have used another person. But....we mananged to get it up there.

Have you noticed any additional wind noise with it?

SlashRacer

Looking good!

I had a my son help me. I assembled the whole rack before we put it on the bronco. Yes...there was some weight and we could have used another person. But....we mananged to get it up there.

Have you noticed any additional wind noise with it?

Yes, but nothing major... and a bit better than the factory rack was. The noise level in the rear seat seems to have gone up much more than the front seats, so sucks for my kids I guess but they'll survive. (They typically fall asleep during road trips anyway.)

I may remove some of the cross bars and PakRax though just to see how that impacts noise levels. Taking the entire rack off when not in use is not really feasible without help... but the PakRax and cross bars can easily be done solo. So that may be a way to reduce noise while you are not actively using the roof rack.

How is the noise for you?? I know you got the windscreen with the cutout for the light bar, and was curious how that impacted things.

RagnarKon

Quick review from me:

I ordered the TrailRax rack from the BN Gear Store during their holiday sale... and just got it install this past weekend.

The Good​

• Uses a standardized mounting mechanism. You can attach anything you want with some carriage bolts and nuts. This is unlike the factory roof rack that would require adaptor brackets and/or drilling for just about anything you wanted to mount.
• Uses the full length of the vehicle.
• The rack itself is very modular. If you don't need the side PakRax for that particular trip, you can take it off. If you don't need all of the cross bars, you can take most of them off.
• Relatively quiet on the road. All roof racks introduce some level of additional wind noise, just kind of the nature of the beast. Thanks to the wind deflector, the additional noise on the TrailRax rack is minimal.
• Supports light bars. I don't intend on using a light bar personally, but the option is there if you need it.

The Bad​

• My TrailRax kit was missing parts. This ended up not being a huge deal... @London and the folks at TrailRax got it sorted out, and I had the missing parts in-hand within a week. But I feel like I have to be fully transparent about it anyway.
• Both of the side rails were bent in a few spots. Not sure if it was damage from shipping or if they were shipped out that way, but nothing a mallet couldn't fix.
• The aluminum extrusions (the crossbars) were poorly cleaned up after the machining process. I had to take an air compressor to clean out all of the metal shavings to prevent any cross-threading. Again, not a huge deal, but since the rack is nearly $2000 your expectations are high.
• The entire kit uses SAE sizes for their fasteners (except for the one nut that interfaces with the Bronco). This is a personal pet peeve of mine. Doesn't it really matter? Admittedly... no, not really. But everything on the Bronco itself is metric, so it would be nice if all of the accessories on the Bronco were also metric. But in the end all it really means is I have to add on SAE sizes to my tool roll.
• It took me three days to install. Now to be completely honest, at lot of this was my ridiculous levels of stubbornness and has nothing to do with the rack itself. A lot was also because it was 28-34 degrees outside, and fingers don't work so well when they are cold. But most of all it was because I was installing this solo and had to MacGyver ways to install this without scratching/denting my Bronco. (Unfortunately my wife is only 4'11", so she is no help on these sorts of projects.) But, yes, in full transparency, it took me 3 days to install it. If you had a buddy that wasn't a midget, you could definitely do it in a day, but you should still give yourself a time budget 3-6 hours just in case.

PICTURE DUMP​

Day 1: installing the PaxRak support brackets—requires removing your hard top, which is insanely difficult to do solo by the way.

One of the bent rails—kind of hard to see in the photo but obvious in person.

Day 2 - Beginning the top rack assembly.

Installing the windshield:

All of the aluminum shavings left over from the machining process:

End of day 2. Most of the rack is there, but the crossbars and PakRax hasn't been installed yet. The green shopping bags were used to prevent scratches.

Channeling my inner @Calgecko
Start of day 3... greeting with a light dusting a snow.

Great photos and write up!
I went through the same basic process without the missing parts and damaged rails and nice hot Florida weather, fortunately I didn't have to do it alone, I had two additional helpers, still a pain in the ass but the results are great and I get asked repeatedly by other Bronco owners including a guy in the neighborhood who just received his new Raptor how I like it and if it will fit their Bronco. I don't find the wind noise to be excessive or really any greater than stock and I added removable pads for surf boards and standup paddle boards, can't wait to add the side racks later in spring although not too excited about raising the rear section of roof for the attachment process.

SlashRacer

Some of us have installed the TrailRax roof and side racks and others have questions on it. There are few conversations going around in a few different threads. This is the thread to post in if you have questions about the rack/side racks or installation of the rack/side racks.

You can remove the first two rows of your top with this rack on.

Love the build and the color! Glad you enjoy our products. If you have any questions or guidance needed for the rack, please let us know!

rws

I'm about to push the order button on the TrailRax roof rack and Pak Rax, however, I'm not 100% on whether or not this is the solution for me. It would be great to hear from experienced owners. Here are my use cases:

1. Hauling / storage of packout boxes / gear
2. Hauling of kayaks
3. Hauling of fuel and water (i.e. Rotopax)
4. Mounting / hauling traction boards and recovery tools

I have no immediate plans for a rooftop tent, we've made accommodations to sleep inside the Bronco or a ground tent.

Question: based on my intended uses, is the TrailRax "overkill" for the job? Any, by the way, I'm not opposed to overkill / over building. :)

Great question, although we maybe biased in this, our rack is great for any level of use. We designed it for your situation as well as the all out user, it is an entirely modular and upgradable system that allows you to start minimal and grow into something more as you grow into new levels of your Bronco and adventures. We think the rack is perfect for you.

SlashRacer

I have noticed a side wind noise with nothing on the side racks. I need to ride in the back to figure out exactly where the noise is coming from.

If you install the boards on the side of a 4 door, you can not open the rear door of the side they are on. If you get the boards, you need to mount them up top.

With our Recovery board plate, you can slide the mount to the rear to avoid hitting the doors and blocking them from opening. the only down side is that the boards will stick out past the rear.

Jumpmasterken27

I love my TrailRax. I don't mind the wind noise with the cargo boxes on top...it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but I've had several Jeeps and know what to expect on long trips, camping, mountain biking and kayaking. Looking forward to adding the water and fuel containers on the sides to see what difference it makes in terms of additional noise.

Love this build!

Sven

Need some 2 door love in here. 😁

Love us a 2 Door Build!

RagnarKon

Quick review from me:

I ordered the TrailRax rack from the BN Gear Store during their holiday sale... and just got it install this past weekend.

The Good​

• Uses a standardized mounting mechanism. You can attach anything you want with some carriage bolts and nuts. This is unlike the factory roof rack that would require adaptor brackets and/or drilling for just about anything you wanted to mount.
• Uses the full length of the vehicle.
• The rack itself is very modular. If you don't need the side PakRax for that particular trip, you can take it off. If you don't need all of the cross bars, you can take most of them off.
• Relatively quiet on the road. All roof racks introduce some level of additional wind noise, just kind of the nature of the beast. Thanks to the wind deflector, the additional noise on the TrailRax rack is minimal.
• Supports light bars. I don't intend on using a light bar personally, but the option is there if you need it.

The Bad​

• My TrailRax kit was missing parts. This ended up not being a huge deal... @London and the folks at TrailRax got it sorted out, and I had the missing parts in-hand within a week. But I feel like I have to be fully transparent about it anyway.
• Both of the side rails were bent in a few spots. Not sure if it was damage from shipping or if they were shipped out that way, but nothing a mallet couldn't fix.
• The aluminum extrusions (the crossbars) were poorly cleaned up after the machining process. I had to take an air compressor to clean out all of the metal shavings to prevent any cross-threading. Again, not a huge deal, but since the rack is nearly $2000 your expectations are high.
• The entire kit uses SAE sizes for their fasteners (except for the one nut that interfaces with the Bronco). This is a personal pet peeve of mine. Doesn't it really matter? Admittedly... no, not really. But everything on the Bronco itself is metric, so it would be nice if all of the accessories on the Bronco were also metric. But in the end all it really means is I have to add on SAE sizes to my tool roll.
• It took me three days to install. Now to be completely honest, at lot of this was my ridiculous levels of stubbornness and has nothing to do with the rack itself. A lot was also because it was 28-34 degrees outside, and fingers don't work so well when they are cold. But most of all it was because I was installing this solo and had to MacGyver ways to install this without scratching/denting my Bronco. (Unfortunately my wife is only 4'11", so she is no help on these sorts of projects.) But, yes, in full transparency, it took me 3 days to install it. If you had a buddy that wasn't a midget, you could definitely do it in a day, but you should still give yourself a time budget 3-6 hours just in case.

PICTURE DUMP​

Day 1: installing the PaxRak support brackets—requires removing your hard top, which is insanely difficult to do solo by the way.

One of the bent rails—kind of hard to see in the photo but obvious in person.

Day 2 - Beginning the top rack assembly.

Installing the windshield:

All of the aluminum shavings left over from the machining process:

End of day 2. Most of the rack is there, but the crossbars and PakRax hasn't been installed yet. The green shopping bags were used to prevent scratches.

Channeling my inner @Calgecko
Start of day 3... greeting with a light dusting a snow.

Glad you love your rack! Sorry about the small issues, I have taken note of them and will relay them to our warehouse team as well as our manufacturing processes so this does not continue. As for missing parts, we are so terribly sorry. We recently hired 4 new hands in our warehouse this past holiday season and in combination of the high volume orders, small things were missed. We are working on them to make sure this does not continue and everything is packaged right the first time.

As for the damage to the side rail, that must have been damaged in transit. Feel free to reach out to us on this, we are happy to replace it for you if you can afford some down time on the rack and get us back the old one! It is important to us that our customers are happy with our products.

Jumpmasterken27

I love my TrailRax. I don't mind the wind noise with the cargo boxes on top...it's not as bad as I thought it would be, but I've had several Jeeps and know what to expect on long trips, camping, mountain biking and kayaking. Looking forward to adding the water and fuel containers on the sides to see what difference it makes in terms of additional noise.

You sir have the exact build out that I have planned! Did you go Heretic Lighting all around?

TrailRax

Glad you love your rack! Sorry about the small issues, I have taken note of them and will relay them to our warehouse team as well as our manufacturing processes so this does not continue. As for missing parts, we are so terribly sorry. We recently hired 4 new hands in our warehouse this past holiday season and in combination of the high volume orders, small things were missed. We are working on them to make sure this does not continue and everything is packaged right the first time.

As for the damage to the side rail, that must have been damaged in transit. Feel free to reach out to us on this, we are happy to replace it for you if you can afford some down time on the rack and get us back the old one! It is important to us that our customers are happy with our products.

Thanks for the offer! The side rails weren’t THAT far bent out of shape that they needed to be returned, and I was able to correct it fairly easily with a few whacks of a rubber mallet. It’s all good now, and the rack is awesome.

The one thing I would like to see is an “addon kit” or “upgrade kit” for the Bronco half-rack. It would be awesome to have the full rack for the winter ski season… and then switch over to the half rack for the summer. That would enable someone to install something like the Bestop Sunrider/Skyrider or just to simply have easier access to install/remove your hard top panels during the warmer months. Since many of the pieces and components between the full-rack and the half-rack are the same, it would be nice to just be able to buy the half-rack’s side rails and windscreen and reuse the mounting hardware and extrusions from the full-rack.

If I’m being honest I don’t think it would be that popular of an option, so I would completely understand if it doesn’t make sense from a business perspective. BUT, it is something I would love to see. Or if you guys are willing to do a one-off for me personally, let me know. Thanks!

RagnarKon

Quick review from me:

I ordered the TrailRax rack from the BN Gear Store during their holiday sale... and just got it install this past weekend.

The Good​

• Uses a standardized mounting mechanism. You can attach anything you want with some carriage bolts and nuts. This is unlike the factory roof rack that would require adaptor brackets and/or drilling for just about anything you wanted to mount.
• Uses the full length of the vehicle.
• The rack itself is very modular. If you don't need the side PakRax for that particular trip, you can take it off. If you don't need all of the cross bars, you can take most of them off.
• Relatively quiet on the road. All roof racks introduce some level of additional wind noise, just kind of the nature of the beast. Thanks to the wind deflector, the additional noise on the TrailRax rack is minimal.
• Supports light bars. I don't intend on using a light bar personally, but the option is there if you need it.

The Bad​

• My TrailRax kit was missing parts. This ended up not being a huge deal... @London and the folks at TrailRax got it sorted out, and I had the missing parts in-hand within a week. But I feel like I have to be fully transparent about it anyway.
• Both of the side rails were bent in a few spots. Not sure if it was damage from shipping or if they were shipped out that way, but nothing a mallet couldn't fix.
• The aluminum extrusions (the crossbars) were poorly cleaned up after the machining process. I had to take an air compressor to clean out all of the metal shavings to prevent any cross-threading. Again, not a huge deal, but since the rack is nearly $2000 your expectations are high.
• The entire kit uses SAE sizes for their fasteners (except for the one nut that interfaces with the Bronco). This is a personal pet peeve of mine. Doesn't it really matter? Admittedly... no, not really. But everything on the Bronco itself is metric, so it would be nice if all of the accessories on the Bronco were also metric. But in the end all it really means is I have to add on SAE sizes to my tool roll.
• It took me three days to install. Now to be completely honest, at lot of this was my ridiculous levels of stubbornness and has nothing to do with the rack itself. A lot was also because it was 28-34 degrees outside, and fingers don't work so well when they are cold. But most of all it was because I was installing this solo and had to MacGyver ways to install this without scratching/denting my Bronco. (Unfortunately my wife is only 4'11", so she is no help on these sorts of projects.) But, yes, in full transparency, it took me 3 days to install it. If you had a buddy that wasn't a midget, you could definitely do it in a day, but you should still give yourself a time budget 3-6 hours just in case.

PICTURE DUMP​

Day 1: installing the PaxRak support brackets—requires removing your hard top, which is insanely difficult to do solo by the way.

One of the bent rails—kind of hard to see in the photo but obvious in person.

Day 2 - Beginning the top rack assembly.

Installing the windshield:

All of the aluminum shavings left over from the machining process:

End of day 2. Most of the rack is there, but the crossbars and PakRax hasn't been installed yet. The green shopping bags were used to prevent scratches.

Channeling my inner @Calgecko
Start of day 3... greeting with a light dusting a snow.

Great to see additional installation breakdowns. Interesting how the different orders arrive in different conditions. I am curious if TrailRax is having any issues getting the orders out due to the volume of orders? Maybe packaging is in need of some reinforcement?

RagnarKon

How is the noise for you?? I know you got the windscreen with the cutout for the light bar, and was curious how that impacted things.

No noise up front. I did pick up a wind noise between the first and second row of the top sections at where it meets the door glass. Maybe the pillar in between the two doors. I rode in the back seat the other day to trace down where the noise is coming from. Not sure how to address it yet.

RagnarKon

Thanks for the offer! The side rails weren’t THAT far bent out of shape that they needed to be returned, and I was able to correct it fairly easily with a few whacks of a rubber mallet. It’s all good now, and the rack is awesome.

The one thing I would like to see is an “addon kit” or “upgrade kit” for the Bronco half-rack. It would be awesome to have the full rack for the winter ski season… and then switch over to the half rack for the summer. That would enable someone to install something like the Bestop Sunrider/Skyrider or just to simply have easier access to install/remove your hard top panels during the warmer months. Since many of the pieces and components between the full-rack and the half-rack are the same, it would be nice to just be able to buy the half-rack’s side rails and windscreen and reuse the mounting hardware and extrusions from the full-rack.

If I’m being honest I don’t think it would be that popular of an option, so I would completely understand if it doesn’t make sense from a business perspective. BUT, it is something I would love to see. Or if you guys are willing to do a one-off for me personally, let me know. Thanks!

We would be happy to look into this and see if it is a possible option as an upgrade kit! We definitely can do a custom order for you if you decide you really want that option. But giving it it's own part number and setting it up on the site will take a bit.

TK1215

Maybe packaging is in need of some reinforcement?

I know there is a whole science behind packaging and what not… but I personally felt like everything was packaged very well.

They used that expanding foam packaging material—don’t know what it’s called… but you smack the bag to mix the reagents together, shove it in a box, and then quickly close/seal it up while chemicals mix and create this expanding foam that fills all of the cracks. I wouldn’t have guessed that it was damaged in shipping, but also I saw the FedEx driver literally kick it off the back of his truck when he delivered it… so… who knows.