Help me design a Hail Shield?

Which Design should I go with?

  • Hinging Mechanism

    Votes: 2 40.0%

  • Rail System

    Votes: 3 60.0%
  • Total voters
    5
Looks good!

The one thing I always am most concerned about with hail shields is their attachment strength to the vehicle, that is, pertaining to the structural limits of the roof rack in all directions - up-down and lateral forces as well as vibration. A larger/heavier hail shield might approach the structural limits of the roof rack, so I think redundant securing methods should always be used (straps/chains or roof bolts). A hail shield becoming dislodged and causing an accident or damage to another vehicle could be a deadly incident. Yours looks pretty secure, but I always like to bring this up just in case.
 
Ours is bolted through the metal roof in 6 different areas with 3 bolts at each attachment point. The entire 10,000lb truck shakes when you pull on the rack or the hail shield supports so it's pretty darn secure haha. Side window guards will be bolted through the doors as well. Thanks for the concern!
 
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It looks great Travis! How are you going to bolt through the doors? Will the shield be "deployable" by putting the shield over the side windows or will the shields be permanently covering the side windows?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Stormtrack mobile app
 
Planning on installing nutserts in several places in the door so we can deploy the guards on the windows in a very short amount of time. During longer travel time we'll have them off but we can put all 4 on in just a couple minutes. I'll show some pictures hopefully later this week!
 
TJKLECKNER said:
It would be interesting to see the before and after gas mileage. Such a huge metal sail
Click to expand...

We averaged 14.25-14.5mpg highway before adding it and I wouldn't imagine it would bring us down much at all. With the truck stock we got 15-15.5 mpg and we were at 14.5 even after adding 2500lbs+ to the truck (from 7200lbs stock to ~10,000 current). It's amazing what a diesel engine can do. I've driven 4.5 hours each way to and from school multiple times with the guard on and haven't noticed a difference in the amount when I refuel. The expanded metal on the windshield hail guard has pretty large holes in it so its not hindering airflow too much there. Next time I go on a longer trip I'll average out the mpg and see what I get.

Edit: There's actually much less surface area than Charles Ryan Mauk's windshield hail guard as posted above. Not that there's anything wrong with his, but just for comparison
 
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