My van came with a Sherpas Combi Translift roof rack system fitted. I didn’t know at the time that some of the components were missing and just saw it as a roof rack much the same as you get from any motor factors. The previous owner gave me the impression that the leaking roof may have something to do with the way the system was mounted to the roof. So i took the whole lot off just to be on the safe side. It transpired that the water ingress was down to a perished skylight seal but i didn’t miss the rack initially.
However, the more i thought about it and the more i looked into the Sherpas system, the more I realized that it was a pretty well designed and functional addition to the van. The fact that the rails slide off the roof allowing easy mounting of things like kayaks and roof boxes made it pretty darn cool.
I had the alloy roof runners that mounted to the roof, and the main cross members mounted to them. There were some components that i had cleaned up and tried to refurbish, but they weren’t brilliant and could really have done with replacing. So I set to looking for the parts to make my Translift complete. I searched on Gumtree one day and saw a complete set of bars and sliders going for £20. This was ridiculously cheap as they are pretty rare and hard to get hold of. So I snapped them up 🙂 …..
So I added them to the van and here you can see the system in action. The top rails slide of and position at the side of the van for easy access
So I was pretty happy. But I continued to search to find some of the extras like the locks to secure the rack sliders to stop theft, and kayak holders. . I found another complete set of on E bay, but the price was quite a lot more expensive. Probably more realistic in the grand scheme of things. This was a complete system with all of the bells and whistles that i was missing. At £200 it was a lot of money, but I know these don’t come available very often. 
So it’s now complete 🙂 .Here you can see the rack from above with my new 200watt solar array attached 🙂
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