How to Silence a Ladder / Lumber Rack

After many fruitless searches, I decided to write my own "How-To" on eliminating wind noise (buffeting) caused by a ladder / lumber rack that extends over the cab and terminates at the windshield.

Here's the rack I picked up for $150!! I know, a steal.


Very simple design


Tough lighting for pictures (and not an ideal spot)

I was able to buy this cheap, but had to do some work on it to make it fit my truck. It was made for an extended cab Dodge, so it extended past my windshield to about the middle of the hood. WAY too much for my liking. The solution was to simply cut off the protruding part at the point where the angled part began. We welded caps on the exposed pipes and gave it a quick paint job from a can.

Everything was going well, until I drove on the interstate for the 1st time! Up around 65-70 mph, there was a terrible noise right above the cab. Like a loud rumble / hum, and no, unlike what you'll find in the forums, turning up the stereo was not an option.

So of course, I came back and tried to search for a solution. I got all sorts of random ideas with airfoils and whatnot, but it wasn't really anything I wanted to do right off the bat. Then I came across one fella in a forum who mentioned, "an old camping trick" to wrap rope around the front bar to break up the airflow around the tubing. I tried that first with a small rope and really long spirals (about 5 inch gaps) and it WORKED....but not 100%. So, I figured if all I was doing was disrupting airflow, perhaps a thicker rope wrapped tighter would do it.

I was able to find a black (to match) dock rope (to resist mildew and whatnot) that's about 5/8ths of an inch and about 12 feet long that was going to have to work. After wrapping this with a spacing of about 2 inches, I was able to wrap the excess around the vertical post and then tuck the tie-end into the spiral.

IT WORKS! I have absolutely NO noise or buffeting coming from the rack now, and I personally don't think it looks that bad. And for a $7 dollar piece of rope, I'm very pleased.


Cruddy photo, but you can see the wraps.



This photo is a little better. You can see the wraps, the excess on the post, and the tag end tucked in.

The only issue I've found (which I'm thinking is inevitable because the rack is right above the windshield) is the dirt dripping onto the windshield when things thaw out. You can see that a little bit in the above photo. BUT, in the long run, my truck is usually dirty...so...not really a new problem.

Hope this is the kind of thing that can get googled. Again, I saw a serious lack of solutions on the web, so decided to display what worked for me.

On an unrelated note, I was putting away shells this weekend and found something that's always nice to see:

My one and only shot at a critter with the rifle this year produced!