Anyone ever DIY'd a luggage rack?

I got handed a 6m length of 10mm steel rod the other day and the more that this thing sits in my garage, the more I'm thinking about it, the more I want to try my hand at making a rear luggage rack for the speedy.

I've bent rods for decorative work before and this stuff is actually not that hard to bend with a little heat. I can get stuff chromed locally and this can end up costing me under $30 complete.

I have the flat bar that can be used as mounts, but I was wondering if anyone has tried anything like this before. PS, we don't get luggage racks in South Africa and importing one would be about $400.00 excluding the price of it.

I say go for it!
I suggest making two cardboard templates of the curve of your decklid, one from left to right at the rear of it and another one at the top -- the hinge side, if you will -- to make the contours look right.
Good luck!

Doable, but being rod and not tubing will be MUCH heavier. The attachment points on the decklid may need to be beefed up to carry the weight.

~WB

Cheers for the hints.

My speedy already has beefed up mounting points on the decklid and body that we did a while back for the gas shocks, so that's a bonus.

I've actually removed my decklid to make a template from old plywood to get the bend right. Ideally I'd like to make the outer frame from one peice of round bar so that i don't have joints all over the place.

We'll see how it goes. I'll be sure to keep you lot updated.

Why would importing cost so much? Is it freight, duty, taxes or all?

If its freight and you can weld and get stuff plated cheaply then what about looking for a cheap rack that needs plating and having the seller cut it in half to package smaller to save on frieght? I've done that before for things like bumpers and fenders. Get it but down so it can go via ground mail which is the cheapest.

I recently looked into shipping a 30# item to UK from VA - was $147! Size didn't seem to matter as long as it was not oversized. And that's just shipping without any customs or VAT that might get added on other end. Shipping seems to have doubled in last couple years. I could ship up to 20# in a ~12x13x3' internation priority box for $47.

Yep, when fuel went up in 2008 shipping prices went up. But now that fuel has gone down again shipping prices did not come down as much as they went up. Seems to always happen. I'm still paying $1.30 per litre for gas up here...that's about $5.20 a US gallon I think.

10mm would look tinny
Most racks made from around 16mm or 5/8"

Do metal scrapyards over there allow you to "pick" and pay ??
If so you've got the jump on US
Outlawed (by LIABILITY thankyou lawyers very much) it here years ago.

For metal I can pick and pay nothing here. They stopped most salvaging at our local dump but the section that has metal and junk cars is still open to salvagers and you don't have to pay anything.

http://www.mangosmoothie.ca/images/months/2009/March/

i have the main hoop done. sort of got benched mini-project. I'll pick it up after I'm done my motor. the hardest part is done. i am not going to chrome it - I'm going silver powder coat.

this was my second attempt at one. the first one was trashed when i tried to do both axis at the same time (X and Y). second one, i did just the shape, then added the curve after. much better approach.

you'll see the shape is a little different than the VS one. i looked at all the available styles and wanted one that suited the cars lines a little more and was closer to the body. i plan on running this one1.5" above the body for the close profiled look.

Mango, that is simply awesome..........I'm also looking at first doing the hoop and then bending it. What thickness bar are you using?

The more I'm looking at the 10mm round bar, the more I'm thinking it's too thin. Still I'll try it as it was free afterall.

As for importing one. Import duties, tax, vat, then the actual shipping of the item because of the weight would kill me.

I've bent roundbar upto 20mm for security gates decoration as well as played with wrought iron art, so this isn't really that much of an issue.

Mango, I love your ride.........I'm going after exactly the same look albeit a few shades lighter...

ps brand new 6m length of 16mm roundbar is about $3. No need to dig through salvage yards.

wire conduit.

perfect size - cheap. weldable.

Worked like a treat, bent the 10mm and it didn't even need heating up. It's definatly too thin though, I'm going to get some 16mm this week and do it again.

I made a template out of carboard only 1 for both sides and just flipped it, so that it would be 100% on both sides, sketched the basics down on a ply sheet and made 2 1/2 sections that I welded together. This was done in about an hour using an old arc welder (in-laws) and a bench vice.

Looks GOOD!

what did you use to bend the pipe?

Power bar and a bench vice..........lol.

I just made each bend very slowly and constantly went back to check the measurements against my template. i.e. I winged it and it actually came out pretty good. Well way better than I thought it would.

Gary - you got some mad SKILZ!!! Looking good on that luggage rack!

wow - all free-form bending - good work!

i used a conduit bender and found that a bit tricky to not have the exhaust bend crimps.