![]() It certainly turned me off, but I had to dig to find it. I suspect, were this limitation to be prominently displayed on Rhino’s website it might turn many people off buying the product. That would be like paying $1000 for a jerry can. It’s just bad value, dude - $55 per kilo (of off-road payload). Nearly $1800 for a roof rack system to carry just 32 kilos. If I got this right, this reduces the Hilux roof rack payload by 16 kilos, to just 32 kilos. The basis for this reduction is not stated. Basically, you have to knock a further one-third off the payload. There’s a further reduction in payload capacity mandated by Rhino in conditions Rhino calls (erroneously) ‘off road’. This might be OK if that were the end of this story, but it’s not. ![]() Therefore, that’s 48 kilos of cargo ‘upstairs’. The Rhino Rack for Hilux weighs 27 kilos - that’s the flat ‘Pioneer’ rack and the ‘Backbone’ rail system. Top Heavy: Roof racks increase centre of gravityĤX4 roof load limits are typically in the 75-100 kilo ballpark. The most common off-road driving mistake (and how to avoid it) > Hard shackles -Vs- soft shackles in 4WD recovery > How to upgrade from a softer SUV to an all-terrain 4WD > USEFUL LINKS FOR OFF-ROADINGĮssential guide to 4WD tyre pressures and related 4X4 driving basics >īasic safe 4WD recovery rules for off-road adventuring > You don’t want to induce a rollover caused by inertial forces acting up there, on the mezzanine. Roof load limits are all about dynamic stability. You’ve got about 300kg on the roof in some cases.ĭriving around with this kind of weight loaded up like that, in a corner or on a cross slope off-road - that’s bad. ![]() Two people can sleep safely in a rooftop tent and they generally weigh more than 75kg. You could probably stick 500kg on the roof, and it probably wouldn't crush the roof if you managed to do it properly. Hilux is the most popular vehicle in Australia and it comes with a 75kg roof load limit. (I also hate the ambiguity of the term ‘strength’.) Vehicle manufacturers set vehicle roof load limits (which makes sense), but counter-intuitively this has nothing to do with the ‘strength’ of the roof. It’s hardly the same thing as Simon Vandermeer building that bottle for antimatter containment at CERN in the 1980s. It’s a platform that needs to withstand reasonably foreseeable loads. Roof rack design is, frankly, not that hard. Rhino’s racks are certainly sexy enough, but unfortunately I’ve formed the view they’re badly designed. And as an engineer, I think about them all the time, and it’s hard not to look at some of the confronting ways they get loaded up, out there on the roads.
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