I woke up this morning after getting back last night from a long road trip only to find that one of my beef bars not only came off the roof, but pulled my solar panel off with it as well. 
Anyone else have their beef bar disappear on a highway? Other than the cost, I’m more worried about the safety of this, but how do I ensure this doesn’t happen again? Are there alternatives?
Never heard of that happening! Did you install them with loctite? Maybe put witness marks on the bolts to make sure they’re not coming loose?
You sure they didn’t get stolen?
them being stolen sounds like the most likely reason why they aren’t there anymore. That’s a lot of bolts that have to come loose and fall out. I’d also be willing to bet you would’ve heard something if it all flew off on the highway
With the way the remaining solar panel is bent, the person who stole it off a residential street would have had to violently yank it off. Also, the cables were torn and there is part of a z bracket from the missing panel still there. It definitely came off on the highway. How I didn’t hear it? Ask the road conditions of the I-15 north of Salt Lake.
the beef bar T-nuts are kinda captive, aren’t they? Don’t they fit in a recess in the back of the mount?
not sure what you mean?
The T-nuts protrude into the bracket for the Beef Bars. You can’t just take the screws out and lift the bars off, you need to slide the T-nuts forward and backward out of the slots in the Beef Bar side bracket after fully removing the screws.
It seems very uncommon for all 4 screws to loosen, unscrew and fall out, then the nuts slide out of the slots.
I would imagine some kind of impact, such as a tree branch or other stationary object could cause this, can’t see how it would just fall off.
Note I have removed and installed my Beef Bars at least 6 times, several of the screws still require considerable torque to fully remove due to the Red Loctite gumming up the threads. The camper has thousands of miles of off-roading through most of the western states.
