Skip to main content

Adding Roof Bars


I keep a beady eye on my local New Zealand auction site (Trademe.co.nz) looking for equipment I can use on Digby at a bargain price. I have been looking for a set of 3 roof bars for a long time, but a brand new set of 3 Rhino-Rack bars are very expensive, so when a pair of used RL280’s came up for auction, I was happy enough to put my money down even though I really wanted 3 bars. 

Everything is a compromise and ideally, most people would go for the RL210’s (21cms legs) to fit to their Delica, but for the price, I was happy going for the 28 cm legs that would allow me to put a possible roof fan in at a later date. 


So when my cheap auction roof bars turned up I opened the package to discover that there were in fact 2 bars and 3 sets of legs in the package, so all I needed to to do was buy the 3rd bar to make up the full set I was after.


Note: So I went to my local Rhino-Rack dealer and brought the extra roof bar and with the additional set of legs I installed it towards the front of Digby. With the new bar, I feel more confident in mounting an awning and other stuff now that I have 3 attachment points.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

So why a Mitsubishi Delica Space Gear..?

In late 2017, when we had finally decided that we didn’t want to spend a large fortune on a luxury overland rig, we started to look around to see what else we could consider, remembering that ideally, we wanted something cheap, easy to maintain, and hopefully reliable. Once you have excluded all the medium to high-end vehicles, you are left with either a car, an SUV, or a van, most of which can be purchased quite reasonably. We ideally wanted something with Four Wheel Drive (4WD) that would allow us to go off the beaten track when required and ensure that we can get through all but the most challenging off-road terrain. As Fiona often says, we want a vehicle that “will get us out of trouble, not into trouble”. Modern 4WD’s are generally a sophisticated blend of true mechanical & electronics drive systems that do their magic behind the scenes to get you through or a compromise between mechanical & electronic features that lead to an “All-Wheel Drive” system. Either way, not bein...

Side Project 3: Repair the Binnacle and Replace the Inclinometer

The next project on the list was to spruce up the dash-mounted binnacle that houses an inclinometer, a temperature gauge and a battery voltage meter, which had been damaged by a previous owner and no longer bolted into place on top of the dash. I also wanted to take a closer look at the inclinometer, which if believed, indicated that Digby was upside down on its roof..! As the white plastic lugs through which the bolts were was mounted had been snapped off, leaving the whole unit ‘free-floating’, the binnacle was easy to remove by just unplugging the electrics. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that some of the missing parts of the broken white plastic were still held in place under the bolts that screwed into the metal brace at the top of the dashboard, which I carefully removed as there was just enough plastic that I might be able to superglue the parts back to the main body of the binnacle. I carefully disassembled the binnacle housing, firstly removing the clip-off rear surround an...

Side Project 4: Nudge Bar Refresh

When we purchased Digby, we accepted that the front nudge bars would need some work. Not only did they show signs of discolouration and rust, but inexplicably, Mitsubishi decided that the nudge bars of this model of Delica should be white, and odd choice as the rest of the vehicle was predominately black over grey. I had previously seen a few similar models to Digby with the nudge bars painted black, which matched to the bodywork and which I thought looked bad arsed… I could have decided to spray paint the nudge bars in place, but I thought that I would do it properly and remove them from the front of Digby, sand down the rust spots and flaky white paint, add a coat of rust-inhibiting primer, then respray the nudge bars matt black to key into the majority of the paintwork, and put them back on the van. As it turns out, the nudge bar assembly is quite heavy and as I was removing it from the front of Digby, I lifted it incorrectly and managed to pull something in my back… Dam…!! At first...