has anyone thought of or tried removing the roof rack? i am thinking about doing it to try to give my armada a sleeker look...

I also think it would look good removed since I will never use it. But it won't look good removed (I have done it) There are 12 screws holding the rack. Half are in a recess, but the other half are screwed into a "nut" that looks as if it was added as a after thought. These extend above the roof surface. The holes have to be filled. I screwed in screws with plastic washers and covers, but they can be seen sticking above the roof and look very bad. The only way for it to look good would to have a body shop fill the recesses , remove the nuts that extend through the roof and fill those holes. This would require removing the headliner, welding the holes, filling, sanding, repainting the entire roof, etc. This would be very costly. :damn:

You might want to print out a picture and white out the rack to get a preview, or better yet Photochop a pic without the rack, before you go climbing around up there with a socket wrench. Your Armada may end up looking sleeker without the useless rack, but it may well end up looking like a bloated Toyota Matrix as well.

If you do a search for Tony D on this forum you can see his 'painted' rack, which looks sleek without looking so sleek you expect a girls soccer team to come pouring out.

Because the roof has that curve the rack has no side rails. The spacing is too wide for bikes and snowboards, plus no one makes adaptors to add a skirack (I tried the Yakima, universal mount and it was a joke). When is someone going to make a decent rack attachment other than a basket?

Because the roof has that curve the rack has no side rails. The spacing is too wide for bikes and snowboards, plus no one makes adaptors to add a skirack (I tried the Yakima, universal mount and it was a joke). When is someone going to make a decent rack attachment other than a basket?

Actually I purchased Thule ski rack and it works great. I have used it for ski and snow boards. It came with the clamps already attached to it which was easy to install - in all 8 screws. I have added an additional rear cross bar and I was able to hook up my Thule cargo box which otherwise would not fit on the front and rear without making new holes in the box. It did prevent my rear hatch from opening though but thanks to rear glass window, it was not much hassle.