I’ve been working on this headache rack for my truck off and on for a few months. In addition to giving me some overhead tiedown points for flat bar that I wanted, it is a place to mount a SWS Traffic Director (made in Canada) and some strobes. I’ve had it with the close calls when I do snow removal—I’ve been grazed by a mini van that came over the curb once and actually hit my arm with its mirror (while I was wearing a full reflective jacket nonetheless). Also, my truck has been rear ended twice.
I like the louvered style headache racks because my rear dashcam can still see out, but I still feel protected. The biggest challenge here was the 32 holes in the 3/16” x 1 ¼” flat bar. The issue was that the holes needed to be tight to minimize the weld gap with the ½” roundbar. Unfortunately, this leaves you almost no margin of error for adjustment of the slats inside the frame. The holes were punched to 17/32”, which means you’ve only got 1/64” on each side for wiggle room. That might be sloppy for many of you in the machining world, but it’s darn tight in the fabrication world I live in.
The solution to ensure alignment and consistency of the punched holes was an indexing fence I fabricated for the ironworker. Basically it is a 1” square tube on which multiple stock supports I made can rest. These are all adjustable via socket head screws. Two different types of material stops can be attached as needed and get moved after punching each set of holes—kind of like you’d clamp a stop to a mitre box table. In the pics these are the red supports and material stop clamped to the ironworker table.
A couple of lessons I learned: 1) when testing the indexing fence I realized you always need a backup/second socket head screw (or two clamps) on both the supports and the material stop. Otherwise, if one comes loose from the vibration of the ironworker, you’ll never, ever, ever, get the exact location back again. This means all subsequent holes will be slightly off. 2) Always place a support closest to the stop at the same distance whenever you set up a new hole location. If not, even the minimal sag of the material at a different distance from the stop will mess up the consistency of your spacing. When I was reading up on this I learned that professional shops always punch material at the same temperature as this can affect the sag of the material and thus the offset between holes. Anyways, for weld-up a laser level was a must.
The next problem was more of a labour issue. I love the louvered design look, but if you think about the gap issue I mentioned above you’ll spot a welding red flag: if you don’t seal both the bottom and AND the top of each flat bar hole by welding, powder coat may not penetrate the side you don’t weld.. I opted to weld the top, thinking that moisture is more likely to pool there. The weld fillet will help it drip off the same as when you taper the concrete around a fence post to make water run away. On newer commercial headache racks they use a submersive rust proof process that gets powder coated on top of it. It’s a proprietary process my power coat guy doesn’t have access to. So I either had to accept that some rust could occur in the gaps underneath the slats, or weld the underside as well. That seemed overkill to me. I may regret my decision, but we’ll see. Having said this, some powder coat fanatics will tell you it’s impossible to touch up the finish...you have to redo it all if there are rust spots or a chip. I say that’s nonsense, especially with modern rattle cans. Even cheap products like Krylon will bond to powder coat just fine, so you can easily touch up rust spots as needed.
I also had to plan the wiring carefully. Originally I wanted to fish all harnesses through the tubing as I hate the look of exposed wires. Sadly, I had to abandon this plan partially because the Traffic Controller I purchased has a large Deutsch Connector on one end. This makes it a PIA to remove the harness from the headache rack in the event of a broken back window; I’d have to remove the entire harness back to the controller in the cab just to take off the rack and service the back window. So I bit my tongue and left that harness outside, but still fished the two smaller strobes on the outside of the light bar through the tubing. They can be disconnected via WeatherPack Connectors (thanks @Chicken lights ). The welding wire you see in the pic hanging out is to fish these cables through after powder coat. The fish holes seal with removable rubber firewall plugs. Before welding the 2” tubing altogether I drilled 1 ⅛” channel holes inside the joints for wire runs.
I didn’t make the mounting brackets to attach the headache rack to the truck. These are a weird fit due to a curved snakey Grade 8 bolt that looks like a corkscrew and goes through the stake pockets so you can still use your tonneau cover. I just bought the commercial bracket for these from Amazon. If I had access to a sample one I may have been able to fab a substitute. But at some point you just say it’s not worth the hassle for $70.
There was some actual logic in using a 30” Traffic Director instead of one that spanned the whole headache rack. What I wanted was to be able to carry metal, pipe, ladders, etc., without it hanging out of the box. If you attach a Traffic Director that spans the entire width of the truck, any metal flat bar, pipe, ladders, etc., will rest on it. By using only a 30” Traffic Director and adding strobes to the end of the headache rack, long material can rest here and get tied down without resting on the Traffic Director (which is bloody expensive BTW). The surface mount strobes are still Class 1, but are a low enough profile you can rest stuff on the top member of the rack.
Final weight is 54.5 lbs., not including Traffic Director and strobes. Only thing left to do is trim some access holes on the plastic panels inside the cab where the cables fish through for a better fit.
Bring on the snow. I guess.
I like the louvered style headache racks because my rear dashcam can still see out, but I still feel protected. The biggest challenge here was the 32 holes in the 3/16” x 1 ¼” flat bar. The issue was that the holes needed to be tight to minimize the weld gap with the ½” roundbar. Unfortunately, this leaves you almost no margin of error for adjustment of the slats inside the frame. The holes were punched to 17/32”, which means you’ve only got 1/64” on each side for wiggle room. That might be sloppy for many of you in the machining world, but it’s darn tight in the fabrication world I live in.
The solution to ensure alignment and consistency of the punched holes was an indexing fence I fabricated for the ironworker. Basically it is a 1” square tube on which multiple stock supports I made can rest. These are all adjustable via socket head screws. Two different types of material stops can be attached as needed and get moved after punching each set of holes—kind of like you’d clamp a stop to a mitre box table. In the pics these are the red supports and material stop clamped to the ironworker table.
A couple of lessons I learned: 1) when testing the indexing fence I realized you always need a backup/second socket head screw (or two clamps) on both the supports and the material stop. Otherwise, if one comes loose from the vibration of the ironworker, you’ll never, ever, ever, get the exact location back again. This means all subsequent holes will be slightly off. 2) Always place a support closest to the stop at the same distance whenever you set up a new hole location. If not, even the minimal sag of the material at a different distance from the stop will mess up the consistency of your spacing. When I was reading up on this I learned that professional shops always punch material at the same temperature as this can affect the sag of the material and thus the offset between holes. Anyways, for weld-up a laser level was a must.
The next problem was more of a labour issue. I love the louvered design look, but if you think about the gap issue I mentioned above you’ll spot a welding red flag: if you don’t seal both the bottom and AND the top of each flat bar hole by welding, powder coat may not penetrate the side you don’t weld.. I opted to weld the top, thinking that moisture is more likely to pool there. The weld fillet will help it drip off the same as when you taper the concrete around a fence post to make water run away. On newer commercial headache racks they use a submersive rust proof process that gets powder coated on top of it. It’s a proprietary process my power coat guy doesn’t have access to. So I either had to accept that some rust could occur in the gaps underneath the slats, or weld the underside as well. That seemed overkill to me. I may regret my decision, but we’ll see. Having said this, some powder coat fanatics will tell you it’s impossible to touch up the finish...you have to redo it all if there are rust spots or a chip. I say that’s nonsense, especially with modern rattle cans. Even cheap products like Krylon will bond to powder coat just fine, so you can easily touch up rust spots as needed.
I also had to plan the wiring carefully. Originally I wanted to fish all harnesses through the tubing as I hate the look of exposed wires. Sadly, I had to abandon this plan partially because the Traffic Controller I purchased has a large Deutsch Connector on one end. This makes it a PIA to remove the harness from the headache rack in the event of a broken back window; I’d have to remove the entire harness back to the controller in the cab just to take off the rack and service the back window. So I bit my tongue and left that harness outside, but still fished the two smaller strobes on the outside of the light bar through the tubing. They can be disconnected via WeatherPack Connectors (thanks @Chicken lights ). The welding wire you see in the pic hanging out is to fish these cables through after powder coat. The fish holes seal with removable rubber firewall plugs. Before welding the 2” tubing altogether I drilled 1 ⅛” channel holes inside the joints for wire runs.
I didn’t make the mounting brackets to attach the headache rack to the truck. These are a weird fit due to a curved snakey Grade 8 bolt that looks like a corkscrew and goes through the stake pockets so you can still use your tonneau cover. I just bought the commercial bracket for these from Amazon. If I had access to a sample one I may have been able to fab a substitute. But at some point you just say it’s not worth the hassle for $70.
There was some actual logic in using a 30” Traffic Director instead of one that spanned the whole headache rack. What I wanted was to be able to carry metal, pipe, ladders, etc., without it hanging out of the box. If you attach a Traffic Director that spans the entire width of the truck, any metal flat bar, pipe, ladders, etc., will rest on it. By using only a 30” Traffic Director and adding strobes to the end of the headache rack, long material can rest here and get tied down without resting on the Traffic Director (which is bloody expensive BTW). The surface mount strobes are still Class 1, but are a low enough profile you can rest stuff on the top member of the rack.
Final weight is 54.5 lbs., not including Traffic Director and strobes. Only thing left to do is trim some access holes on the plastic panels inside the cab where the cables fish through for a better fit.
Bring on the snow. I guess.
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