Painting roof racks

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I have a question how hard is it to remove the roof racks (the bars that run the length of the car) from the roof? I heard something like the screws are under the headliner in the car? Is it a pain to get to the screws?

My other options was to cover the whole top part of the car and spray paint the roof rails because after I took out the cross bars the fading paint really sticks out more.

[xXGTBspecXx]

the end caps on the rails hide 2 under each endcap T25 torx screws. they are very hard to get out without stripping.

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are you talking about in or outside the car? I already took all the torx screws off that attach the cross bars to the 2 roof rails.

[Huffer]

Read again.


the end caps on the rails hide 2 under each endcap T25 torx screws.

[T_F_E]

the end caps on the rails hide 2 under each endcap T25 torx screws. they are very hard to get out without stripping.

are you sure? yesterday I took out mine and t27 was a perfect fit and I didnt have any trouble removing them

[MyogiNightKid]

Depends on the conditions your cars lived through. Before I purchased my 98 BK last year, it had never seen a day in a garage, always parked out on the street, but they rarely use salt in the city I picked it up in so everything has a nice sheen of surface corrosion, but isn't seized. Mine came out easy peasy as well, cant remember the size.

[ShadowGT]

Yes, each of the end caps of the side rails flip off to reveal two torx screws per end cap. That's it.
When you take those off it leaves behind (besides years of wax and dirt) 8 large-ish bolt heads that can be plainly seen.

I took my rack off. I'm ok with the bolt heads sticking up, looks kind of steam-punk to me in a way. However.. the rub strips, the 3 that run down the center of the roof.. each have 3 sheet metal screws in them. I took those off and promptly put back on because it looks like a drunken Japanese robot attached them.
Enough torque was applied to blister the metal outwards from the roof so it left 9 raised and ragged holes in my roof. That would require a grinding wheel, bondo and a bit of extraneous body work to do to even that out.

Before reinstalling the rub rails I sanded them all to knock the flakey paint off with 80 grit. Then feathered the bare metal and paint with 300 grit.
Put a coat of duplicolor spray primer, 300 grit sanded them again, let dry - put two coats of duplicolor flat black.

Done deal. I like the main rack off, just hated the disrepair of the rub rails.
Thought I was done until the garbage bags I was painting on blew over while I was getting a beer and covered up the rails I just painted.

Screw it.. can't really tell it got messed up. Not like I'm going to enter this thing in car shows. The point is to move fast enough so you can't notice that.

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all done.. I painted with them on the car.

I will post pictures as soon as I can get them to upload

https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2009/04/Img_0145-1.jpg
https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2009/04/Img_01541-1.jpg
https://sl-i.net/FORUM/images/imported/2009/04/Img_0153-1.jpg