Over Engineered

I have been working on a kayak loader as we are trying to manage with only one vehicle. I like the general idea of the Kari-Tek Easy Load but wanted to be able to adapt the loader to different car and kayak combinations. Prototypes came and went until I got to this:

Prototype kayak loader

Most of the aluminium and the sliding mechanism is from a cheap step-ladder (much cheaper than buying stock), with a few bits and pieces of scrap. On the plus side, it is relatively easy to load one fully laden plastic kayak - but when you add the second kayak, it is hard to lift and slide. On the subject of sliding, the mechanism attracts sand (of course) which you can safely say, does not help.

There are various solutions to the problem on the web - mostly ways of protecting your car as you slide the kayak onto the roofrack - with one bright idea - that of loading from the side - where the rack is much closer to the perimeter of the car. This plus an observation from Catherine along the lines of 'can't you just have supports that slide out from the roof bars?' prompted the following design:

Simple Kayak Loader

The roof bar extensions are just a push fit, and the cross bar stops the kayak rubbing against the car - simples. If you have central supports on the bars (I normally do, but not shown in this picture), you just load the second kayak from the other side. So, no moving parts, light and easy to pack away - cheap.

Time to turn the old prototype into a loft ladder.