Westcott Designs Modular Roof Rack Review

Westcott Designs Modular Roof Rack Install Overview & Initial Thoughts For the 5th Gen 4Runner

Westcott Designs is an up and coming name in the offroading industry.

Out of Phoneix, Arizona, Westcott Designs are made in the USA and was founded upon years of experience in the auto industry. Jeff Westcott, the owner of Westcott Designs, took a look at shortcomings within some of the products offered in the offroading/overlanding industry and set out to improve upon them.

Find it online: 

• Westcott Roof Rack: Check Price

The Design

The design of the Westcott Designs Modular Roof Rack may look similar to the Prinsu, Sherpa, Victory 4×4 and others, but it has one major difference that no other rack has that I know of.

It has the ability to convert from a standard platform rack like the Sherpa or Prinsu to a basket style rack like the Gobi. Floor inserts are an add-on option of $455 but at a base price of $899, it still is cheaper than a Gobi rack. A fully loaded Westcott Designs comes in at $1,354. I decided to hold off on the floor inserts for budget reasons but I will be placing an order for them soon.

Regardless, it’s the option to be able to run both a basket-style and platform-style rack that had me coming back to it. It is important to note, this is a no-drill design.

Features

Another great aspect of this rack is that Westcott Designs can incorporate your 40″ light bar, cut out for six 6″ lights, or ten 4″ lights at no additional cost.

Something I think takes this rack to the next level is the integrated signature bottle opener included with every rack and hatch ladder (pictured below).

No more needing to buy a bottle opener to mount to your roof rack, it’s already included. It’s really the little things in life that mean the most sometimes and this little bottle opener sure is nice to have.

Also, think about it, you are at a rig meet up or something, and your buddy, who absolutely has to have bottles because he doesn’t like the taste the cans give the beer (we all know that guy), forgot his bottle opener. What do you do? Well if you have a Westcott Designs roof rack, you go on and pop that bad boy open with that fancy bottle opener.

Turn Around Time

Westcott Designs is known for being the best at two things, quality and speed.

Westcott Designs have a Miller Robotic Welder named “Roberta”. This means, perfect welds every time and fast turnaround time and I’m talking lightning fast. I ordered my rack and hatch ladder on October 16th; it was sent out on October 19th and was delivered on the 23rd. See, lightning-fast. None of that 8-week (or even longer) lead times.

They say “Time is Money” and thanks to the amazing people over at Westcott Designs, they save you both.

Customer Service

Customer service is a very important part of any company today.

With social media being a prevalent part of our lives, a bad experience can significantly hurt a company if it’s blasted all over the gram. Jeff Westcott answered all of my (many) questions nicely, patiently, and quickly. He was great to work with and always was very communicative when messaging back and forth on Instagram. I called him a couple of times on Sunday to get some clarification and he was more than happy to assist me and made sure that I knew to call him back if I needed to.

As an owner of a family business, customer service is very important to me as we strive to treat our customers like family, and Westcott Designs is no different. They are great people to work with and I am looking forward to working with them again for more products in the future.

Wind Noise

I drove my 4Runner for about 5,000 miles without any serious mods, until the roof rack. I know some racks cause a lot of wind noise but the Jeff Westcott rack causes no wind noise that I could hear. I literally could not tell that there was a roof rack up on the roof now, so A+ on that!

Some additional specs about the Westcott Designs roof rack:

• Includes 10 extrude hon track crossbars
• Designed to be low profile at 3.5” tall at the platform rack height
• Crossbars, front visor, and side uprights are all aluminum
• L stand-off brackets are steel to maximize the rack load capacity
• Roof Rack only weighs 46.7 lbs
• Designed to have no wind noise at any speed, even with light configurations
• According to Westcott Designs, it also gets just over 2 more mpg than the Gobi rack
• Designed to fit all Front Runner and Prinsu accessory mounts

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Great design
• Very sturdy construction
• Great powder coating
• Amazing customer service
• Fast Shipping

Cons:

• No instructions
• Crossbars don’t have a drop-in option like the new Prinsu or Frontrunner racks to mount things
• Not as low profile due to the option to drop the rails down in the “basket” position

Install Overview

So the install for the Westcott Designs rack is the exact same as a Prinsu no-drill rack. Being that there are tons of videos out there of people installing Prinu’s on their 4Runners and that I am a complete noob to all of this and my install went fine, you can too just use the Prinsu install videos or their install directions.

I watched Taco Twonz (aka Running4Tacos) video on the Prinsu and it helped quite a bit. They laid it out the best in terms of steps and is a great resource. Or you can always just download the Prinsu install document from their website.

The biggest thing to note, when you get the rack all put together and are putting the feet brackets on there, make sure the slotted holes are facing down and the shorter bracket is in the back. I didn’t realize this and had to take the rack off and switch the feet brackets. Yay for noobs! You will know if you don’t have them on correctly because it won’t line up. Other than that, it’s the exact same as a Prinsu rack install.

Final Thoughts

I am very happy with my roof rack and will definitely be getting more products from Westcott Designs. They have a great reputation and I have to say, they lived up to it. This rack is beastly and I am very excited to see where I can take and what equipment I am going to put up there on my adventures.