Standing on top of your vehicle.

Wondering if anyone has some advice for putting together a platform for standing on top of my Toyota 4Runner. I have rigged up a great canoe carrier, 7 feet wide and holds two canoes, but I need to set up something new that will provide a shooting platform for when I need a little different perspective.

The factory racks are painfully narrow, somewhere around 32-36 inches (less than 1 meter) and probably only 4 feet long (just over a meter). I would like to have the platform slightly over sized for that sized base, maybe 6 or 8 inches (15-20 cm) wider and 10-15 inches longer.

I'm able to design and put this together myself, although I would have to outsource any steel work. Mostly wondering what materials would be both light and able to handle fairly high humidity here in North Carolina.

I'm accepting both proven and possibly ridiculous ideas. :P

Looks like you will need an customized aluminum frame that has a way to be secured to a quality roof rack. Then a steel mesh grate welded onto. Maybe the sides will have to have an hinge and fold into the middle with aluminum sliders that extend to hold the folded out portion of the platform? It won't be light. The easiest platform would be the back of a pick up truck or the steel mesh welded ontop of a truck contractors rack. That would be a little more wide.

Another option is to have a platform secured to the roof rack and another section fold out with legs to the ground. That will give you the biggest platform. Similar concept to car top tents that you can find by googling online

I sometimes stand on the from tyre. I have also opened the sunroof and stood up, shoes off through it. Stopped now, had the herby geebies that the sunroof would shut while i was in there, LOL

You need one of these. It will hold you.

http://www.toyota-4runner.org …-gen-toyota-4runners.html

DiamondRax

DTZee wrote in post #16639660
You need one of these. It will hold you.

http://www.toyota-4runner.org …-gen-toyota-4runners.html

THAT is an awesome rack. Perfect really. Unfortunately I need that seven hundred bucks for my next lens, and then a new Cheetah Light and then another lens, and then another light...

My current set up sits on the cross bars. I could probably just add a plywood platform but I'm not sure that treated plywood is made to be outside year round.

Might need to just remove the cross bars and look into getting a cheap steel platform made that I can bolt stuff onto.

rockpirro wrote in post #16639629
I sometimes stand on the from tyre. I have also opened the sunroof and stood up, shoes off through it. Stopped now, had the herby geebies that the sunroof would shut while i was in there, LOL

I know the feeling. I find myself pulled off the side of back roads standing up through the sunroof waiting for someone to run off the road, slam my truck, and cut me in half with the roof. Not a good feeling. :P makes it hard to nail the shot.