Ladder on Roof Racks - How ?
Hi,
I'm about to drive from Brisbane to Tasmania for a well deserved long holiday and need to re-stain the cottage while I'm down there so I need to take an extension ladder. I've got the Roof Racks already because I needed to get one of those Roof Boxes and if I slide the box as far over to the drivers side as I can there is plenty of space to put the ladder on the passengers side of the racks. Problem is that I've never driven with a ladder on racks before and I'm not sure the best way to strap it on.
I've done a few test runs and have found that this is the best way I can attach it with the two hitch straps I've got:
https://www.woodworkforums.com/attach...1&d=1228551151
(Photo taken from rear passenger corner)
I tried strapping from the Roof Rack bar over the top of the ladder but of course it is far too unstable like that. I tried a few other things too however this seems to be the most stable and also stops the two sections of the ladder from sliding within themselves as well.
If you can't see what I've done I've just hooked the strap hook onto the rail from underneath on one side of the rail foot then passed the strap around the next closest rungs (ie. not the rung directly above the roof rack rail) and the straight back to the rail on the other side of the rails foot again up from underneath. The hitch thingys seemed to really pull the straps nice and tight both front and back and as they're working against each other I don't get much movement at all. The ladder can still wobble around a little bit as the top isn't attached to anything but I really need to yank on it to get it moving. The bottom is really solid.
It seems OK but I'm just wondering if anyone has any other solutions with the items I have ? I'm thinking a longer strap or two could be strapped over from one corner right over both the ladder and the roof box to the diagonal corner & vise-versa to really hold the ladder down but I'm thinking it's overkill and probably not required.
I'm going on a 100kph test drive tomorrow to see if this works but please feel free to comment or suggest anything I can do differently to make 100% sure that it wont fly off the roof of the car at 110kph on the journey down to Tassie in a couple of weeks time.
Thanks,
Steve.