The California roof can lift about 50 kg if you opt for the electric roof (Ocean or Coast*), and 25 kg if you have the manual roof as on the Beach.
So in reality, if you plan on having any kind of roof rack, ski box or similar on the California Beach manual roof, and still sleep with a sense of security, you need stronger gas springs.
Thankfully, to an effort that began in the Caliboard.de forum, the Belgian company Hinscha cam up with a perfect replacement kit: https://www.hinscha.com/en/p/gas-spring-t5-t6-california-580n
Featuring 580N, these easily hold a roof rack loaded with some gear, whilst still being easy enough to open and close when not loaded.
The installation is relatively simple, but be advised you need to build some contraction to get the stronger gas springs installed.
In the Caliboard there is a whole lot of various solutions, below is ours.
*Coast is not available in Sweden.
Now, we can easily load things on to our roof rack and enjoy a safe nights sleep upstairs even with sudden extra snow loads :-)
