Tundra with load bars mounted to factory bed rails

[Coflyfishing]

Hello all, I found this site and am starting to build up my first pickup. I have purchased the front runner load bars that work with the tundra bed rail system to support a RTT and my wife and myself. The bars are rated at 650lbs or so, they will be fine. I'm concerned about ripping the rails themselves out of the bed side. Any thoughts or ideas? Do I add one more bar or start from scratch with something supported by the top of the bed itself? Here is a pic, thanks for any input.

 

[amo292]

I wouldn't worry to much about ripping the bed rails out. They are pretty well secured. The only thing I would be concerned about is the rails themselves bending a little bit. They aren't made of the greatest metal and it looks like all the weight will be distributed onto a small patch. I say try it out and see how it works. You will probably end up getting rid of the bed rails in the future as most of us with 2gen Tundras have found them pretty useless. Hope this helps and good luck!

 

[scottgps]

Here is what did....

I built a bike rack using the bed rail bolt holes. I used superstrut available at HD in the electrical section. These were overall some pretty nice bikes so weight was not the concern so much as damaging expensive bikes that I did not own. HD and Lowes only have a few accessories. I used "L" brackets to make the connection from the truck to the strut rail. There is a bunch of other stuff online.

I spread out the load by using a cross brace at each bolt hole. Haven't had any issues and have a bunch of miles with bikes (singles and multitple tandems) on it. Plus the superstrut is very easy to add attachments to. I made sure that I secured the bars to each other diagonally which makes it each pretty easy to remove ( but it doesn't come off often).