TL;DR: ROAM quality control sucks to a ridiculous degree given the price point, and their customer service sucks just as much.
I’m planning a long road trip with my family in a few weeks. 3,000+ miles. I have a TRX, and limited bed or inside capacity with 3 kids and our stuff.
So I did what anyone with a Retrax XR would do; added Rhino Rails to my bed so I could mount cargo cases to hold our shit.
I looked online a bit, went to my local Rack Attack to see in person, and decided on using two ROAM 95L cases, and their mounting hardware, on top of the Rhino racks over the bed. I did a dry mount to test it and I thought it looked great!
During install, I noticed the ROAM mounts were super hard to slide on to the Rhino T rails, and the fastener hardware that came with the 95L brackets wasn’t even large enough to keep from spinning in the mounts, or keep them in the T track.
Then, I noticed that the two mounts, even when attached in the exact same spot on the front and rear rails, were somehow longer or shorter than each other. I literally had to put the right side of my rear bar almost 1/2” cockeyed in the Retrax track to make the mounting plates for the 95L line up with the boxes.
This befuddled the shit out of me. I double checked my rack measurements, rack placement, position, everything. It was all lined up square, yet one box was coming up 1/2” short in its mounting plate versus the other side.
And then I finally decided to measure the boxes themselves.
Turns out my two 95L mounting boxes are literally NOT THE SAME SIZE.
The reason they are 1/2” off in their mounting brackets, is because one of my cargo cases is 1/2” shorter in EVERY SINGLE DIMENSION (interior and exterior) than the other one. One of them is 47.5” long, and the other is 47” long. One is 13” deep on the inside, and the other is only 12.5” deep. I triple measured and even had my wife measure to make sure I wasn’t being stupid, and confirmed again that one of my boxes was 1/2 dimensionally smaller than the other.
This makes me now go look at the 95L hardware brackets and give more thought to why they were so difficult to slide on to the rack rails.
Turns out EVERY one of them is bent concave on the outer “wings.” See the pictures.
I call my local Rack Attack, and they check their mounting plates and all of their stock is bent too. And then they check the other two boxes they have in OD Green, and one of them is 48” wide, and the other is 47”!! A full inch less dimensionally.
This may not seem like a huge deal, but it means that you cannot possibly put the boxes into mounting plates side by side on the same set of rails. Either your rails are cock eyed, or the boxes are loose in the mounts, which defeats the whole point of the damn mounts.
I call ROAM today and try to speak to someone about it. After lengthy discussion, I basically get told it’s “normal” and not every box can possible match the rest, and that the mounting hardware being bent is how they’re made. As for fasteners that don’t even fit the slots on their own hardware, and makes the hardware useless? “We’re looking into it.”
No offer of replacement. No offer of refund. No offer to make it write, or apology, and even concern that their QC is this god awful.
I’m pissed. I spent $1100 between both boxes and the hardware.
I’m taking it all back to Rack Attack tomorrow, and returning it.
I hate to do it, because it’s a local store and it’s not their fault, but this stuff is useless to me now.
Anyone know if the Pelican BX140R cases and roof mount hardware is any better? Any other brands?
We leave in two weeks and I have no clue what to do.
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