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PART 15

Basket Case

A standard Suzuki X-90 has bugger-all boot space, and about a third of that is taken up by the spare wheel. Luckily the spare wheel sits near flush in a depression, so it’s not too bad... that is when you run standard tyres.

Oscar runs 31s... which gives you two chances of getting one to sit flush in the wheel-well... Buckley’s and None. You can fit a 31 into Oscar’s boot, but that’s about it apart from a couple of sleeping bags. The fridge? Forget it... you have to make a choice between getting stranded with a flat tyre or putting up with warm Chardonnay, and I am so over warm Chardy it’s not funny... so what do we do?

I was wandering around the ‘net looking for a solution, when I came across another X-90, with the rather fitting name of “Generation-X”. This awesome purple beastie is owned by Simon of Shropshire Suzuki (www.shropshire-suzuki.co.uk) and what grabbed my attention was the way he had sorted out his spare tyre-carrying issues... on the roof, using an exo-cage!

Ok... but I am not a huge fan of exo-cages as whilst there isn’t an awful lot to get hung up on over in the UK, there’s plenty to get caught up on over here in the bush. But the idea of carrying a tyre up top stuck, so I gave David De Castro over at Rhino-Rack a call to see what he could suggest in a roof rack system.

After having a good look at Oscar, David advised that there was indeed no standard fitment available to put on Oscar but they may be able to help us out. Rhino’ have a small-sized alloy basket, but it was left up to Nick and myself to sort out how to attach the alloy basket on the roof. So, David loaded me up with a selection of mounts, brackets and crossbars, and I trotted over to harass Nick into coming up with a custom solution.

Putting a mount on the back section of Oscar’s roof wasn’t an issue, but the front posed a major problem due to the glass targa section in the middle. There was no ready-made mount available to fit the narrow roof section between the windscreen and targa glass. We couldn’t alter the Rhino’ mount (and why would you want to?) as we didn’t want to compromise the engineering of a product already proven to work. We had to work with what we had.

Nick grabbed a mount and a tape measure and went to work. After a bit of head scratching and some calculations, we worked out that the racks could in fact be mounted front to back, as opposed to side-to-side as they are meant to be mounted, and would still allow the targa roof to be removed if needed. Pictures were taken and flicked back to David to check with his engineers, who agreed to allow us to fit it that way, but only as it was a custom job. Once again, Oscar had to make things difficult...

The fitting was done down at the Rhino-Rack H.O, with David and Nathan wielding the tools. David advised us that two of the most important things about fitting roof racks, are getting your measurements right first go (having “oops” holes in your roof is not a good thing) and making sure you are extra careful about rust prevention throughout the installation.

This is why you should ALWAYS read your instructions carefully as the Rhino-Rack guys have gone to a lot of trouble with them to make sure your installation goes smoothly. On this note, Rhino’ only approved Oscar’s ‘north-south’ installation of the mounts and racks, because a normal ‘east-west’ install was not possible. The company spends a lot of time on R&D to make sure your racks perform as promised, so stick with their recommendations and you’ll have years of hassle-free use.

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