Roof rack

The factory roof rack on the Excursion is a joke. In order to keep the car garagable, the crossbars basically sit flat on the roof. Those crossbars flex under any sort of a load, so when you put anything on the roof, you’re denting the roof.

I used the factory rack once and vowed that I would never use it again.

Pretty much every company that make roof racks, makes adaptors that will connect to the factory rails, so my options were limitless. That being said, the roof of the Excursion is more than nine feet long, so I wanted a rack that wouldn’t be dwarfed.

When we use the yurt, the door and kitchen ride on the roof, so I didn’t want a basket with rails all the way around. If you’re planning to mount an RTT, you’d probably be happier with no rails at all.

I went with the Rhino Rack Elevation, as it has side rails but no rails on the front and rear. They offer no rail and full perimeter options as well.

The unit I purchased is 7 feet long and 56 inches wide. It will hold two standard shipping pallets, though I wouldn’t want to carry a pallet of anything that high.

At seven feet, it covers most of the roof. Also if I need to transport eight foot long boards, I’m not concerned about a little overhang front and rear.

The width of the rack matches the width of the roof exactly.

The delivery was sort of a pain. Due to the size of the rack (it shipped assembled), it had to be delivered by a trucking company.

On Rhino Rack’s website, I was able to download vehicle specific mounting instructions that told me which holes to use for the mounting brackets and how far to set them in to line up with the roof rails.

You definitely need a helper for this install, if only to get the rack onto the roof. The total install took my brother and I about three hours, but we weren’t trying to crank it out.

I haven’t noticed any additional noise, but my 7.3 doesn’t have a muffler. I also haven’t noticed any fuel economy reduction either. As they say, YMMV.

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