While visiting my buddy JagGuy at his awesome shop, I saw something in his metal trash trailer. It was a mesh like material. I went over to check it out and it was a door off a server rack. You’ve seen these before or maybe you haven’t been in a server room where physical access the servers is secured by a keyed door of some kind or other.
I asked him if I could save it from the recyclers. He said, “Sure.” I told him I was going to see if it would work as a floor for my roof rack. We ate barbeque, chatted for a while, and I tossed the door in the truck and drove home.
The door was about 74 inches in length and 23.5 inches in width. My roof rack is 4 foot by 4 foot. So this door, cut in half, fit perfectly across and left about a foot of space uncovered along the length.
I cut the door in half with my angle grinder and a cutoff wheel. I dry fitted the halves on the roof rack and was happy with the results. I went to the hardware store (twice, or was it three times, maybe twice to one store and once to another) to get stainless steel bolts, washers, and nyloc nuts.
I wiped the door with some grease and dust remover. I then painted it with some black spray paint I had left over from another project. I removed the roof rack from the roof and drilled my holes (lots of holes some in the wrong places) and got the hardware installed and tightened up. Several of the bolts failed catastrophically when I was tightening them up. Each one that failed, failed about the same as the others about midway up the bolt. My dad used to complain about the cheap Japanese products that began flooding the country in the 1970s. Today we complain about the cheap CHINESE parts that flood our country. I didn’t check the country of origin on these bolts, but let’s go with China for arguments sake. Bring back American made hardware. I promise not to complain too much when they fail. At least if they fail, an American had a job making them and we aren’t sending money to a country determined to destroy us. (stepping off soap box)
I recorded several videos of my cutting and narrative about what I was going to do only to have my phone camera fail in the heat of my shop.
The temperature in the shoppe was 110F that day. I would have this trouble again later when recording video for several other projects. I really need to upgrade my camera equipment to a GoPro or something. Maybe my wife will buy me one for my birthday in two weeks….hint, hint. (who are we kidding, she doesn’t read my blog, she’ll never see this)
So I have the upgraded roof rack installed and I’m pretty happy with it. I feel pretty good about myself too. I recycled and reused something that would have just been thrown away, eventually bought by a Chinese scrapper, and made into some cheap crap and sent back to America for someone to buy and then either throw away, or be stacked in a garage packed full of crap.
Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.
