raspritz

To all,

I'm a newbie here, and I cross-posted this on the Modified board, but perhaps it is more appropriate for the Stock board. Mea culpa it this is a faux pas. On Friday, we bought a brand-new 2018 Rubicon Recon, on Saturday we took it off-roading, and now its Gobi paint job is tastefully spattered with mud, just as it should be (this is not our first Jeep rodeo). The Recon will be my primary winter vehicle, and as I'm a ski instructor at Breckenridge, I need to figure out how to transport skis, other than running them down the middle on the inside. I already own a Thule gutter mount system with ski rack, but I can't park the Recon in my garage with the rack installed, so that's a deal-killer. I also already own a Yakima hitch bike rack, and as a ski instructor I can get the Yakima Hitchski convertor at 70% discount; however, the reviews are all awful, the consensus being to save one's money. Thule likewise only offers a similar ski adaptor for its bicycle hitch rack. Quadratech makes no fittings that will allow attachment of skis. I've read all the old threads here, but it doesn't seem anybody really has solved this problem very well. Are there other products of which I'm unaware? I have an old Barrecrafters ski rack from the 1960s, and I'm thinking of cannibalizing it and welding up my own, but my wife has visions of skis scattered down the highway, which perhaps is not entirely unlikely.

Does nobody produce a hitch rack that will fit a JK???

Thanks in advance,

Rich

Grasschopper

Hey Rich - Did you happen to see my post in the Modified section about this topic? I'll dig up a link after posting but what I did was to get a cheap Allen Sports Bike rack and pull all the bike hangers off of it. I then put my Yakima Ski rack on that like they would on roof rails. Worked great to haul my snowboards and skis to the mountain this passed winter.




With the help of guys in the machine shop at work I've solved the second issue shown here by grinding down that part of the rack to allow the tailgate to clear it without hitting. It's a pretty crappy race design really and I'm shocked Quadratech sells the Allen Sports racks to Jeep owners. If the spare was on there, there would be no chance to clear that part. I only paid $90 for the bike rack and honestly other than the clearance issue I think I'll wind up using it more than my $450 Küat NV.

Edit: link to my other post: https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/modi...top-jk-344554/

raspritz

That is really cool! Thanks! I dug out my old Barrecrafters ski rack from the 1970s and was thinking to do something similar, harvesting the cross-member ski carriers and having somebody weld them to a vertical frame welded to a hitch, using a standard Blue Ox hitch extender to clear the spare tire. I'll post here when it's done.

Rich