i have a 2006 Montero Ltd that the fam and i are about to take on a couple of long roadtrips. With the third row down we have little space as all of you know. The manual says not to put a load directly on the roof but the roof top carriers but vendors such as thule and yakima seem ideal for exactly that. My question is if anyone has had any experience hauling cargo on the roof. I am trying to get by with just using the factory rails and not having to buy the cross members to fit such things as a bike rack, hard carrier, etc. Any help would be great, thanks

 

I would not encourage anyone to carry gear directly on the roof of their vehicle. Having said that, if your load is kept to sleeping bags and some super light bags, it would most likely not cause any problems past a scuffed paint job on your roof. The investment of two cross bars and a solid 4x4 roof rack is well worth the money and will last longer than your rig since the cross bars can be mounted on almost all vehicles.

 

I put the roof rack from a 1984 Chevy Caprice station wagon on my monty and It looks good and works great, I carry anything I want on my roof, but it does raise the center of gravity a lot. The spoiler on the roof rack seems to increase the gas mileage significantly.

 

Glad to hear that you found a rack that worked.
A couple of things you can do about the elevated center of gravity.
Next time you buy tires, get a higher load rating. This will increase the side wall strength, so you get less flex when the tires are inflated for on road use. The other thing is replacing the shocks with stiffer valving . I'm not sure if you have upgraded your shocks, but it makes a world of difference.

 

So which cross bar for the rack and components will we need to add the Thule carbo on the top for the 01-06 Montero (not sport)?

 

I'm not running Tule crossbars on my Monty, but if you go to your local rep. and tell them you make and model they will set you up with the right attachments. I have a Yakama, and I mounted crossbars onto the factory racks. When I'm not running the BajaRack, I have a Loadranger Yakama lockable cargo carrier on top. I use this only for highway road trips. Whenever I'm in the backcountry I use my BajaRack.

 

Do you have any pictures of your setup?

 

I'm working off of a hand-me-down computer these days so my on-line abilities are very limited.
I do have a couple shots of my last trip, but I think the images are too large to up load. I'm not very sharp when it comes to computers...I think there's a way to decrease the size of the image, but you got me?

I can tell you that the BajaRack really stands up to the rigors of off road use.