Nice Rack! It even whistles at itself!
Well, I finally got back on task and knocked out a few small projects. I have a little momentum so, hopefully, I'll get a few more knocked out soon too. Anyway, the first was the bed rack. I needed to get that dialed so we could more 'easily' carry our SUP's. I'll explain the quotes around 'easily' later.
My dad had a Thule Xsporter rack on his 2004 Tacoma since about 2005. He took it off because he never really used it. I had a ford ranger at that time and I really wanted a bed rack so I could carry our surfboards easily...and have some security along the way. We use the Thule Double Decker surfboard carrier and it's pretty awesome! Any real thief will defeat it in about 1.2 seconds but it keeps the casual dirtbags at bay...at least, so far! Okay, moving on. We sold the Ranger and bought the Tacoma. I made a simple bedrack out of Thule crossbars that bolted to the factory bed rail system. That worked great and we could load up our SUP's under them. The issue with that is the SUP's are 12'4" and 11'6" so they stick out a MILE and it requires you to drive with the tailgate down. Tailgate down isn't a problem in itself but you will start to see a lot of rock chips show up on it if you do it much. I just can't stand that so I wanted to move the boards up top. Plus, it makes parking in town a load easier.
Big problem: Thule discontinued the adapter clamps for my model of Xsporter that would allow it to easily adapt to the Tacoma bed rails. And, even if you had the adapters, they wouldn't allow the rack to spread out to the full length of the bed, which I wanted.
Obvious Answer?: Spend dollars, spend too much time, and make it way more complicated than necessary to get the job done. Yep, sounds like the 1 Bored Clerk M.O.
First step - buy two long pieces of 2.5" x 2.5" x 1/4" wall angle aluminum
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Second step - go to the insanely well equipped shop at work, complete with awesome metal cutting bandsaw, and realize that the entire shop is set up to deal with 4' and shorter stock.
Out comes the hacksaw...which is really demoralizing when a perfectly good bandsaw becomes a nuisance because it's right in the way of where you need to clamp your giant pieces of aluminum.
Anyway, you need to cut some notches out of both ends of the aluminum to fit around contours and obstructions in the bed...to get the rail to go the full length. No pics of the hacksawing because I was too busy sweating and cussing. I was lucky too because the cut I needed to make was way longer than the throat of the saw so I had to put the blade on the frame at a 45 degree angle. If you've never had the pleasure of hacksawing that way, you really owe it to yourself to try it out.
Third Step - Machine some clearance holes in the rack bases so you can fit a reasonable size machine screw (you'll be tapping into the 1/4" aluminum angle so a little diameter helps, I think)
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Fourth - Locate the base on the rail as you please then punch, drill and tap the holes...and bolt the base to the rail.
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Fifth - Buy some T-Slot nuts. I went with McMaster Carr part # 94750A584 and they fit perfectly. The only drawback is that you now have to use a 1/2" bolt to hold your rails to the truck. Oh well.
Sixth - Locate the rail/rack base assembly on the truck rail and mark your mounting hole locations. Measure carefully. I used 3 T-Slot nuts on each side and it seems plenty sturdy to me.
Seventh - Put the T-Slot nuts in the rails in the right location to match up with your holes. Use a tape measure...that's why they exist! And you have fun while you learn!
Bolt up the rails using Gigantic 1/2" fasteners. I chose Stainless socket head cap screws because they look the business.
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Adjust the crossbars, toss cool toys up there and pose in front of your decidedly uncool bank of apartment garages!
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Go have fun now.
Okay, now to explain the 'easily' situation. SUP's aren't particularly heavy but they are crazy long and wide. We had the process of loading them into the bed down to a 3 minute science. How could we have known that raising them up 4 frickin feet would have any impact on that process at all? Well, it does! If you don't get the balance point just right, you will be staggering like a drunk as you try not to pinball off all the neighboring cars. God forbid it's the least bit windy! You might as well just shove them off onto the ground and save yourself the embarrassment. We've long wanted to do a nice weekend of SUP'n and surfing and this will allow us to do just that because we can lock both the Big 'uns and the surfboards. So, we can reasonably comfortably leave the boards we aren't using locked to the truck in a lot of places. This is currently a theory win with a pending actuality win. :victory:
Oh yeah, it whistles just a bit when nothing is loaded. The crossbars are so easy to remove that we don't usually drive with the bars on without something being loaded so it's no biggie.
