Surco Safari Roof Rack - Revisited

All right, big time update to the Safari Rack info. I did several changes and enhancements this year and have basically had it on the vehicle starting from my TECORE/MORA trip up until writing this. It will soon need to come off though in preparation for winter.

I purchased the great Camping Lap 70" awning last winter. With their price and free shipping, you can't go wrong. It is very sturdy and stood up to fairly high winds on the beach at the Outer Banks.

It has a very simple mounting system. You get 2 large L-brackets made from stainless steel with several holes in them. How these bolt up to any given roof rack is up to the user. I ended up buying an extra light mount kit from Surco and used the mounting brackets from the kit.

The other end is drilled to match the channels in the extruded aluminum frame of the awning. You slide the provided bolts into the channels (which stops them from spinning) and bolt the frame to the brackets.

Hi-Lift Removed & Awning Added

I was on the lookout for a better way to mount the axe and shovel for quite a while. The Surco mounts are OK, but their real problem is that you needed a socket wrench to remove the axe or shovel. Unfortunately most mounting systems work this way, until I found this really great solution.

It is from GOBI Racks and designed for an H2. The locking mechanism is great and removing the items is now much faster and easier. Here are some close-ups of the mounting brackets.

Here are a couple of shots with the mounts in use.

Scepter Military Gas Cans

* !Orange! * !Orange! * !Orange! *

Did you notice the shiny blaze orange gas cans instead of the red ones? The short story about this is that over the past couple of years (leading up to the new CARB laws making it illegal for dealers to sell Scepter Military Fuel Canisters in the US to the public) Scepter has been phasing out all colors for their fuel cans except for olive drab and sand.

They first phased out blaze orange cans that were mostly used by firefighters and other emergency personnel. Then just recently they got rid of the red ones. I have been looking for orange cans for the past 2 years now. I finally decided to put an ad on Expedition Portal in the classifieds offering to trade my unused red cans for orange ones. Well, somebody in California was actually looking for 2 red cans and had been using the orange ones but really wanted to trade. A few weeks later and we had a perfect exchange through couriers. Wow, the power of the Internet!

New Rack Mounting System

As described in an earlier post, Roadie and I started to question the sturdiness of the original mounting technique due to the fact that there were only 4 bolts holding the rack in place in the roof channels and that I actually bent the aluminum tabs that the bolts use when over-tightening them.

So since last year I have been trying to come up with a better way of mounting the Safari rack, but not the permanent way that Roadie has implemented.

Solutions do come in the strangest of ways! Those Gobi axe/shovel locking mounts described earlier, along with the Gobi Hi-Lift locking mounts I have implemented (future thread) come with powdercoated steel backplates with 2 threaded holes each for mounting to the Hummer H2. They were not required in my solution but lo and behold ... they are the perfect size to slide into our roof rails!

So in these pictures you will see 2 larger grade 8 bolts above the roof channels. These are the ones that bolt to the backplates which are inside the channels (you can make out the backplate in the left picture). To make sure of no slippage, I purchased some rubberized matting surface and stuck it to the plate using 3M heavy duty double sided tape.

One bolt uses the original mounting hole that was previously drilled into the cross member (see previous pictures). The second bolt uses the axe/shovel mounting brackets on one side and a metal plate bolted to the rack on the other side. Once all 8 bolts are tightened down, the Safari Rack is not going anywhere!

I am glad to report that I have had absolutely no problems this year with the new system. This includes the Spring TECORE/MORA trip, the August CampNL weekend, the late summer Big Western Trip, and numerous other shorter local outings. The next upgrade for the Safari Rack will be to find a better way to mount the removable items - water cans and surplus ammo cans. I am currently using ratcheted tie downs and elastic cords but tying down and untying is a bit of a hassle and usually takes longer than I would like. So I will be looking to attach some anchor points to the Safari Rack and use some kind of semi-elastic cords (not as stretchy as the bungee-type) which will be easy to hook and unhook, but still very strong so that I don't get anything flying off the top of my Trailblazer!

Here is a picture of the whole package for now.

Locking Axe/Shovel Mounts