Welcome such,

I got an email from some Ford dealer search thingy. I basically raived up my local dealer and my salesman so I am getting aftermarket parts dirt cheap. i have '06 rack strips on order and will have them soon. i will do a full write up with pics when i do it. cost is $105, plus tax and i was told is was a true bolt up.

these are screw in from the top down.

 

The junkyard idea didn't go anywhere. I found an Escape with the tracks but it had been rolled and the roof was damaged. So I ordered the '07 non-hybrid tracks with 12 bolts from Fordparts.com for $125 shipped. Fordparts will accept a return on the tracks, but the Ford dealers will not as these are a "production installed" parts and the risk is on the purchaser I was told.

I expect the rack nuts to be "blind nuts", i.e. anchored in place to the underside of the roof, so the entire operation should be external. I ordered new bolts as it appears the track bolts are shorter than the rack bolts, and a too long bolt could certainly cause damage.

I plan to coat the new bolt threads with RTV before the final install.

I should have my new parts in a couple of days and will report back. This *should* be a relatively minor procedure taking maybe an hour IF all goes as planned.

 

kool,

we shold have our parts around the same time. As for the RVT, don't go there. Use some clear silicone at the mounting surface and use Red loctite for the bolts themselves. RVT should only be used in metal to metal high heat placements, that stuff will eat paint.

 

Thanks for the tip on the RTV, I'll follow your advice on what to do there.

Let's stay in touch on the install, and good luck to both of us!

 

Okay, I got the rails and mounting bolts from FordParts.com, and they are the parts needed to do this conversion. Contact me if anyone needs the part numbers.

The new bolts are the same length as the original bolts, but I suggest ordering new ones anyway as there is the possibility of damaging the head when removing the old bolts. They are Locktited in place.

So here's the problem/question: The old bolts are REALLY hard to remove. They are a #3 Phillips, and I've only been able to remove one of them so far with a screwdriver. I tried a second one and began to damage the Phillips head so I immediately stopped. I went out a bought a manual impact driver with a P3 bit, and a fresh P3 apex tip for my screwdriver and I'm ready to try again. But does anyone have any suggestions on how to cleanly remove the old bolts? I have this fear of mangling the Phillips head and having to drill out the bolt. Don't want to go there. Do you think the impact driver would loosen them with light tapping? NEED HELP here so I don't screw this up.

UPDATE: I chucked the P3 Phillips bit onto a 3/8" drive rachet wrench and was able to loosen and remove all 12 bolts by applying heavy downward force to the bit while slowly turning the rachet. Two of the bolts now have damaged heads but all were removed. Oddly, it was only the rightside rail that had tight bolts, the left could be removed with a good screwdriver. You'd think Ford would use a torque wrench for this assembly, but I guess not.

There was a large amount of dirt trapped under the old rails, so I cleaned there and waxed before mounting the tracks. The tracks are a fraction of the rail weight, lower profile, and look very nice. I'm glad I did this modification.

I torqued the new bolts to 50 in-lbs which feels just about right.

 

I picked up my rails today and installed them. Pretty straight forward installation. I managed to strip out 2 of the bolts. I used a brand new P2 tip and my rachet and they still stripped. I went to Ace hardware and bought new ones with hex head for .90 each. much easier to torque down. took about 1 1/2 hours total.

 

My bolts were P3. Chucking the apex tip in the rachet did the trick for me. I also mangled two of the bolt heads when removing because of over-torqueing by Ford on the original assembly.

 

Hey, can you send me the part numbers of the rails and the bolts? Thanks!