So Cal highlights of a custom Nomad, and cool surf racks in a private beach location at the time. Hello, If one could afford a new 1955 Chevy Nomad, one could afford to get the best set of surfboard racks made at the time. Those racks on the Nomad are/were the best ever. Cast aluminum, shaped perfectly for elevation away from the roof of any car or station wagon. The cross bar was also cast aluminum and made fully adjustable for the width of the car’s top. The gutter clips were well protected to prevent damage to the paint. So, foreign cars with a narrow base, all the way to wide station wagons were able to use this design. The best thing was the ease at which the clip on bar brackets went on to the rain gutters. The small lever made the clamping easy, secure and fast . The rubber dipped ends of grabbing clamps protected the car’s paint with ease. Note the cross bar tubing that slides nicely into the clamping supports. The tube slides stick out as the roof measurement becomes narrower. The Chevy Nomad and station wagons had the maximum width. The cast was good for several 50s-60s longboards, each weighing 45-50 lbs. So, a limitation of 3-4 boards per set of racks. The most current racks hold is approximately 125 lbs, limited range for safety. But, back then, it was usually for two longboards that equaled about 100 lbs. Jnaki We could only buy and use the all steel racks that had similar rubber tip clamps that lasted one or two heavy weeks of off/on application before they started to tear. Then inner tubes cut to fit were the glued on protection for the gutters. Width applications were available for our steel units, but we had to unscrew nuts/bolts that rusted with the salt water easily. But, they were adjustable, with some work. Not like the expensive aluminum tubes that slid through the ready made supports and clamped down easily. Years later, the design of the cast aluminum clamping end supports had a heavier duty flat surface instead of a hole at the cross bar end. That allowed a flat piece of steel or oak wood to be used to custom make any size for surf racks of a different kind. When my wife and I went to visit our friends in Kauai, for the summer one year, we bought the cast aluminum supports with the flat ends to take with us. They fit into my suitcase filled with t-shirts, shorts and Levis creating a padded travel bag. We could have bought a commercial steel, surf rack and taken it apart, but this aluminum model was perfect for traveling surfers. No bulky steel bars to hold or ship with the suitcases. All we needed was to measure the distance across any vehicle and make an oak piece of wood to reach each of the clamped ends. (measured hard wood cross bars, several coats of polyurethane and load those modified long/short boards on top…)At the end of our summer vacation, we gave the racks to our friend and he was happy. We also gave him our share of the purchased 62 Rambler Sedan we all bought together when we left for our So Cal apartment. Although the surfboards were getting shorter, (mine was a speed shaped 8 foot model) they all fit on top of the strong Oak wood cross bar, plus stretched rubber straps. So, the total weight limit of a commercial rack is about 100-125 pounds. That would support two or three old longboards we rode as teenagers. But, times were changing. YRMV Our rack was never tested above, 4 fairly lightweight, custom surfboards at the most. Our friend could have taken the custom made surf rack apart and taken the aluminum end supports to another island. But they kept them on this cool 62 Rambler for the next several years, including being banged around by the flooding from a huge hurricane. The aluminum never rusted, of course.
The Jalopy Journal
