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OK, So your Hannibal Tent arrives and your looking at this... your very first Hannibal Box. Yahoo!! I'll try to talk you thru assembling and installing your Hannibal rack. One person can assemble the entire thing, and then need someone's help to lift it on to the roof and lay it in the gutter or align it with your rail system. So let's open the box. Remember try and not use too long of a blade as you may scratch the rack, and the scratching should come later when your cutting your own trail thru the woods or carrying the hunt back home. Or in my case Grilling on your new Weber Q on top of the rack at the camp site.
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OK, You've started opening the box. You'll see the side gutter supports wrapped individually aswell as the center cross support rails, and a small box with the gutter clamps, or rail bushings, some instructions and the necessary nuts and bolts for assembly. In some Racks you may opt for the removable sides option as I did, and these will be wrapped individually as well. And if the instructions are not there or clear enough, then aren't you happy you have Ozziesoffroad? if your having difficulty during install, Call me, I'll be happy to help if I can.
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OK, so you've gotten the main components. The side rails and the cross bars. Fit these together as shown, place one of the side rails upside down, and slide in the 3 cross rails. then continue with the other side.
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OK, here is the base all set up. Now at this point it's all loose, there are no bolts thru it yet, that comes later. The direction that the platform will be pointing will be evident when you lay the platform on since the spacing between the cross rails is not the same. Opening the box, Setting the parts aside and getting to this point should take you no more than 25 minutes.
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OK, now if yours is a Gutter model, you will want to install the provided Gutter rail rubber strip. This is optional, some Gutter roofs difer slightly from model to model and you may not be able to use the rubber protector on your model roof. It's rare but it does happen, fit the rubber strip on there anyway at first. Now take the support system off the rest of the rack and open up the box so you can lay the support structure on the upside down rack.
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Sorry I don't have a wide pic of the rack platform upside down and the rail system on there. But here's what you do when you have the rails on the platform (upside down) You pull off one side of the gutter support and turn the cross rails upside down and attach a full length of the rubber wide strip. This strip stretches a bit so pull on it slightly as your adhereing the strip with it's self adhesive backing. Then turn the cross rails over and reassemble the side rail supports. You could have done this before, but this way after laying it in the space it will live in, you can better judge how much self stick strip to adhere to the cross rails.
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OK, so when the cross rails are turned over the rubber strip presses against the bottom of the platform, making the platform quieter when driving and or walking on the rack.
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OK, So your done installing the rubber strip on the 3 cross rails, you attached them with the rubber pressing against the bottom of the rack and your now ready to attach the rail system to the rack itself. Find the supplied bolts, washers and Nylon lock nuts. Install the bolt from the underside and attach the washer and the nylon lock nut, tighten only until it's snug, DO NOT tighten these all the way. Not yet anyway
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OK, so make sure your ready to lift and install this beauty onto your roof. This is the time to give your roof one final cleaning, a real good waxing, wax everything, clean out the sunroof drains real well, inspect and replace the sunroof rubber edge strip if necessary, etc..
Also if you have a Range Rover Classic like me, open the doors and check under those rubber plugs up under the gutter, in there you should find large phillips head screws, Use a Phillips Head number 3 driver to go around and tighten all of these, replace any you see are missing, this will tighten the roof to your vehicle and prevent wind sepage and water leaks in the long run. The front ones are almost always loose or sometimes in bad cases missing all together. Just a tip...from me.
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OK, So you got your buddy to help you turn the rack over and lay it up on your roof. Now if at first you see that the side rails are not wide enough to sit in the gutter, this is the time to pull slightly on either side by both of you and since you DID NOT tighten the rail system to the platform, it will give and let you sit the rack in the gutter properly. Check for a good fit. Walk around it, slide the rack forward until the front of the rack is lined up with the very top of your windshield. now you may have to press down on the sides of the rack to get it to slide down into the gutter. The rubber strip on the foot of the side support may be a bit wide and tough, so a few good downward pulls will help the rack slide into it's proper place and stay there. Once in, the rear of the rack may stick up out of the gutter a bit. no worries this will conform to the roof line soon enough. Now get yourself the 6 or 8 side clamps. Start in the center, then front, then rear. Get a 3mm Allen wrench and loosen the side set screws on the sides of the rack.
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OK, so you've slid in the first of many side clamps, you'll notice they go in a bit skewed towards the rack, this is normal. Also, the clamps do not come powder coated anymore, they were getting scratched alot by customers while installing and re-powder coating is time consuming and cost prohibitive for a couple of pieces alone so we leave them natural now. You've loosened the set screw, installed the clamp and are ready to attach the washers and nylon lock nuts provided. Some of the side clamps will be longer than others, look to see which one you'll need before attaching them and bolting them down. as with any assembly, attach all of them with the nuts only snug until you have all of them in. Carefully using a open ended wrench tighten the nuts.. I say carefully so you don't scratch the area around the nut your tightening. I place masking tape on either side right behind the nut so that everytime the wrench hits the end it doesn't scratch. a bit of preventive protection makes all the difference in the install. Once they're all in semi-tight Go ahead and tighten them well starting in the center, then front, then rear. Give them all a tight snug fit, then have a friend hold the rack down onto the gutter so you can do the final tightening. Look at your gutter for signs of major warping while tightening so you don't tighten too far. When done, then tighten the set screws, then after all of these are done in that order, tighten the platform bolts tight.
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Alright, if your rack had the optional removable sides, then you installed those, and installed the rear clip of the rack witrh the supplied bolts and nuts. If your rack is a standard rack, once you tightened the rack down on the gutter or rails, you were done and are ready to start enjoying the benefits of having a full length roof rack. REMEMBER: Measure your truck from the ground to the top of the highest point on your rack, if your adding fuel cans or a tent, re-measure once that's done and take note of the trucks new height. Take notice of the possible height restrictions you may encounter at the bank, drive thru or parking garage. My Antenna always scraped the underside of McDonalds drive thru's, not that I ever visit fast food establishments... oh and Wendy's too. I'll cover adding Rack accessories in the accessories section.
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