Installed ARB Awning and Yakima Roof Rack
To get ready for an upcoming 10 day road trip, I finally bit the bullet and bought an ARB awning. I had been looking at them for a long time, but was trying to avoid hanging anything outside the truck. Ghetto awnings weren't working well so I bought the awning and a Yakima rack to mount it. I did this all last minute, and the only place I could get the awning in time was from Four Wheel Parts. They were awesome. It wasn't in stock at any close FWP stores, but I called the closest one at 11am and they had it shipped from the warehouse in LA and it arrived for pickup the next day by 1pm. Can't beat that.
I mounted the Yakima rack to the tracks I had installed on the truck cap when I bought it. I went with the round bars because I figured it would be easier to mount the awning compared to the tear drop shaped aero type bars. Per the Yakima rack guide, I needed a set of bars, skyline tower, and landing pad 1. I bought the bars at the local REI, but they didn't have the other parts I needed so I ordered off Amazon. Unfortunately, I only ordered one pair of the landing pads when I needed two. Secondly, the rack guide doesn't tell you that you need an adapter to run the round bars on the skyline tower. As I mentioned before, the local REI didn't have the landing pad nor did six other shops I called. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I am mounting this thing the night before I leave. I get lucky, and the REI in Berkeley has everything I need. So after a nice long drive to Berkeley and back, I get the Yakima rack mounted.
Step 2 - Mount the awning.
I wanted to buy the ARB awning mounts, but I couldn't get a set in time. To mount, I read on ExPo that a guy used conduit hangers and 3" L brackets. I went to Lowes and bought eight U bolts and four 3" L brackets. I also bought a couple of additional hex bolts to mount the awning to the L brackets as ARB only provided 6. ARB required 4 bolts to secure the awning and with my setup I had 8.