Ever bought from www.northwestparts.com ??

[jingram]

I've been actually looking at a couple or racks that they make for the Nissan Xterra, but since they predominately make stuff for the LR crowd I thought I would pose the question here. Who has one of their racks? What is the build quality like? Where you happy with the purchase? How was/is their customer support?

 

[david despain]

well i have never purchased anything from them so i cant say personally. but there are a number of people on www.discoweb.org that have. do a search for northwest parts there and then draw your own conclusions. just dont tell them about our little site over here

 

[pangaea]

David,

I've seen a couple of their racks in person, and my honest opinion is this. Love it or hate it, the racks are a cheap knockoff of the Safety Devices roof rack. The racks that I've seen, I haven't been impressed with either the quality of materials (thin pipe, compared to DOM tubing used on the SD rack), or the quality of the welding.

The flipside is that Safety Devices hasn't been importing racks for over a year now, and their return to the US has been dangling out in front of us like a carrot the whole time. Last I heard, they're still saying 4-6 months...

The bottom line IMO is if you're looking for a rack that has the aesthetics of the SD rack, but you don't plan on using it for serious load carrying, the NWP rack an OK alternative. If you want a rack that you can use for heavy loads without worry of failure, you're better off trying to find a used SD rack.

 

[pangaea]

Whoops. Just re-read your post and saw that you're asking about Xterra racks, which makes 80% of my post useless.

With that in mind, I don't know much about the rack choices for the Xterras, but I'm still not very impressed with the NWP racks.

What other options are out there for your rig?

 

[bigreen505]

If you are looking for a Xterra rack, check in with Calmini and see where they are with the 05+ rack.

 

[jeffryscott]

I had the NWparts rack on my Discovery and had no complaints. I stood on it all the time with no worries. The welds weren't the prettiest, but they held. The person that bought it from me when I sold the Disco is still using it and as far as I know he has no complaints. Granted, I didn't carry the loads Nathan would on his rig, nor did I carry things for extended periods of time so those would definitely be considerations.

There customer service, at least three, four years ago, left a lot to be desired though.

I second the Calmini rack, when i was looking t Xterra's that one was attractive ... however, customer service is again lacking from what I hear.

Good luck ...

 

[jingram]

Thanks for your perspectives guys. The only reason I was evaluating them with the others like the calmini rack is that they had a rack that neatly utilizes the existing rails and airdam on the xterra. I most likely will be going Calmini and modifying it to suit my needs. Thanks again!

Jack