We keep a beater van (95 Mazda MPV) around to hit music festivals and take camping. Sometimes space inside gets a little tight, and a roof rack would be great. But there’s no roof rack, and none of the rear windows open to tie anything down.
We can’t be the only ones in this position. We don’t need much, even a couple rails with tie-down brackets would be great. My pitiful searches on roof racks seem to suggest they’re all custom fit to a vehicle. Or am I missing something?
Can’t I just bolt on a generic set of rails (or whatever the word is—maybe that’s part of my problem) down to the roof? Maybe add a bit of primer and silicone to the spot to keep out the rain? Or sand, weld and paint them?
And by “I,” I mean “hire a professional.” As in someone who knows how to bolt or weld things so they don’t fly off on the highway or leak all over everything. What professional? Call body shops and ask them? Call my mechanic?
Clearly I don’t quite know how to phrase the question succinctly or what questions to ask, so any help, advice or direction will be greatly appreciated.
Unfortunately, yeah, as far as I know all the generic rack systems require the ability to open the rear windows or doors. You probably will need a professional to do some drilling to get some roof rails on there.
As for which professional, there’s actually a place where I live that does nothing but car racks but that might just be a symptom of living in an outdoorsy college town. If there isn’t anything like that in your town, your best bet would probably be a body shop that has a sideline selling truck accessories.
A hitch-mounted cargo rack/box might be a better solution for you. That should be basically a bolt-on and the weight capacity is actually more than you would want to put on the roof. The only drawback is that you might not be able to open the rear door when you’re loaded up.
I think those either clamp onto factory rails or to piece that goes on the inside of the door frame. Since (I assume) the OP’s van only has one rear passenger door, I don’t think that’ll work.
“Rain gutters” in that sense usually means the separate metal troughs that run along the side of the car that have mostly gone the way of the tail fin. I don’t have a '95 MPV in front of me, but I don’t think it has them. Those e-commerce car accessory sites are often pretty awful at actually getting the applications correct and I suspect that’s what we’re seeing there.
There’s some models where every car comes with the mounting points for the roof rack even if you don’t spring for the rack option, but image searching for 90’s MPV’s it looks like they’ve either got full roof rails or nothing. I suspect the listing says “requires factory rack” because only MPV’s that came with the factory rack have the mounting points. I’m not sure why you would want to replace the factory rack with that aftermarket one, but apparently you could.
1995 MPV have rain gutters on both sides. You’d be able to find generic roof racks that clamp onto the rain gutters.
Some brands may not fit on the drivers side rear, where there is no door.
Some brands may not fit because the side brackets are not tall enough to clear the roof .
perhaps only an SUV specialist shop has the type of generic roof rack to fit your roof,
as your roof is like Landcruiser, RangeRover, Jeep…
I had a similar issue. I got a roof rack attached to a car that lacked a factory one.
What you need, unfortunately, is vehicle model-specialized fittings. I went to a specialty store that does pretty well nothing but that - had a whole room filled with fittings, organized by year and model.
Now I understand why I wasn’t finding things right off the bat.
As far as noise/gas is concerned, wouldn’t that only be a problem above fifty miles per hour? Okay, so we do get it to sixty and once to sixty-five, but this is our no-hurry travellin’ van. Home Depot, camping, utility things.
Attaching things to the rails/rain gutters freaks me out. They’re tiny strips of sheet metal with a ghost of a moulding on them. There’s no rust or visible weakness, but I’d be mighty scarred to use those as attachment points.
I guess bolting down to the roof in places would require getting through the headliner, so that’s out. None look like they can just weld on in place (none that are commercially available so far). Going to email some of the links (thanks!) to ask directly if I’m overthinking the rain gutter bit.
I have used Yakima rain gutter mounts on a Ford Ranger extended cab and a Ford van. Plenty strong enough to haul stuff (within reason). I routinely carried 3,4 and sometimes more kayaks which can weigh 50+ lbs when outfitted.
