Rack system for pickup truck beds - Bikes / kayak / tonneau cover.

[ExtraSlow]

Hai guise! I've been wracking (ha!) my brain on this one, and y'all are smart, so help me out.

This is for a 2020 F150 with 66" bed.
I tow a travel trailer in the summer, and I fill the bed of my truck with firewood, generator, raft, beer etc. It's full. What I want is an over bed rack that can hold either 4 bikes or at least 2 kids bikes (20" size) and a 2 person kayak. if I'm carrying a canoe or kayak, I'll want it high enough to clear the cab. When it's just bikes, lower than that would make it easier to load and unload. So a height-adjustable rack would be nice. Also want a tonneau cover over the stuff in the bed to keep my firewood dry and generator away from spying eyes. Either soft rolling or retractable. No hard covers please.

So there are systems that accomplish this, but feels like it'll end up costing $3000 or more to do all this. That's madness and I'm a cheapass. Help me out, this is as good as I've gotten so far.

Truxedo Pro X15 tonneau with Truxedo elevate rails (rails only, for t-slot functionality)
Yakima OverHaul HD towers and bars w/ tonneau cover kit for t-slot function
Some kind of Bike holders that work with youth and adult bikes (Yakima Raptor Aero maybe? )

This setup is $3500 or more and doesn't have anything for a kayak. Not that I own a kayak or canoe yet, but those seem available on kijiji sometimes, so It'd be nice to have the option.

[Skrilla]

Rep Cost on the X15 is $548, rails cost is either $155 or $166 depending on size. Don't see Yakima in the book, but see a ton of Thule and DeeZee options.

[ExtraSlow]

The towers/bars and bike racks seem to be the expensive side of this plan. Any suggestions on that stuff? Lotta options out there, but it's confusing to configure and compare.

[Skrilla]

I'll dig around and see what I have

[Skrilla]

Sorry if these aren't exactly what you're after, I just googled what you listed and looked for something similar in my book. Looked at the Yakima Raptor, it looks similar to the SportRack upshift which are around $100/ea, or the Race Ready SWA 64705 similar price. They do show a Kayak rack single holder for a rail system that is $186/ea.

The Yakima Overhaul looks like the Adarac Pro aluminum (the over cab height style), which fits with a tonneau cover installed, and those are $520 for silver or $565 for black. Im no expert and these may not be what you're after, just thought I would have a look and see what pricing is on similar items.

EDIT: also have a lot of Thule options. From the Upride or Pro XTR.

[Skrilla]

Also if you want I can send you pics of what the book has for options.

[triplep]

There are ton of options for carrying the bikes if you aren't fixed on having them on a rack. Here is a few options you have https://www.etrailer.com/faq-travel-...bike-rack.aspx

Might be cheaper to do something like this and just get the tonneau cover. Then when you get a kayak maybe you can just get away with a simple roof rack?

[ExtraSlow]

something like this, thinking the skyline towers , for cheapness and lowness.
still with same truxedo elevate rails.

[KRyn]

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[ExtraSlow]

Got all my parts now. Some from tirebob (who has good prices on the brands he does carry) and from two online retailers. Special shout-out to Purolator for shredding the box for my Yakima parts so completely that I tried to refuse delivery. Fucking shit bags. But in the end the contents were all there, even if half the cardboard was missing.

A second shout-out to tdot performance for being out of stock on the bike racks I wanted, so I had to work a little harder and found even cheaper ones from hitchweb. Third shout out to hitchweb for ridiculously fast shipping. Honestly too fast. I could have used another week, there's a reason I ordered those parts last, why did they arrive first?

[ExtraSlow]

Probably doing install tomorrow. Will post pics and parts list assuming this Frankenstein creation actually goes together.

[ExtraSlow]

Got this far.

[littledan]

That looks awesome. Would be good base for an elevated truck tent and keep storage down below

[ExtraSlow]

The parts I used wouldn't' support a truck tent, but the concept works if you buy heavier stuff.

So, just a quick summary of what I did. And keep in mind I was doing my very best to keep the as dirt cheap as possible.

Firstly, I needed a tonneau cover. Had to be soft rolling or retractable. There are a million truck racks that work great, but 90% of them interfere with the tonneau cover. I hate hard folding or hard one piece tonneau covers.

Tonneau and rails: Retrax makes some really nifty covers that have the slotted rails integrated into them. Honestly, if you aren't a cheap prick like me, that's the best way to do it. The Retrax "XR" series (Retrax ONE XR or PRO XR) both look excellent, just a little more money. What I did was get the Truxedo ProX15 soft rolling cover with the "Truck Hero" Elevate TS rails from @tirebob at UrbanExpressions and their pricing was excellent, better than anything I found online, and service there is always on point. You need an "inside the rails" mounting and not the more common "On top of the rails" mounting type, so pay attention to that, or it won't work with the rails. Truck Hero and Truxedo are the same company, so they publish a compatibility chart that helped me figure that out. See they even have the logos beside each other when they at installed.




For the "rack" itself, Yakima seemed to have the best options that I was sure would work with the slotted rails. Thule's website confused the shit out of me, and I was really worried that they'd have some oddball proprietary connection. I ended up settling for the Yakima Skyline towers and bars, specifically you need the "Skyline with tonneau cover kit". After a lot of googling I got that from Tdot performance, where I liked the price but not the experience. I like the yakima skyline setup particularly because I can remove the towers and bard without any tools, just a key, and I'm left with pretty low profile little nubbins that Yakima calls "Landing Pads". Now this Skyline setup is pretty light duty. Intended for a storage box or a few bikes. Rated to 165lbs. Yakima also sells taller "Overhaul" and "Outpost" towers that are rated to 300lbs. Both should be available for use with these rails as long as you get the "with tonneau cover kit" version. I figured the lower towers would make loading bikes a lot easier. Hard to lift a bike over your head from the ground.


You can see how low profile this skyline tower is. Really close to the cover. Now where that matters is when you are rolling up the cover. You need to roll it up under the bars obviously and there isn't a lot of room there. In fact, it's a pain in the dick. You'd want to plan on not rolling that cover up and down very often when the rails are installed. Either leave it up or down mostly I think. A retractable cover would be a smart upgrade.

I tried to buy my bike trays from Tdot performance as well. I put in an order for Sportrack Upshift carriers for $119 each. Turns out Tdot didn't have any inventory of those, and delivery was going to be 8-10 weeks. No thanks. Cancelled that order and found a really cheap option from Hitchweb. $64 for Swagman upright #64720. Incredible price, since the cheapest Yakima one I found was $250 each. So cheap I bought three. Don't have these installed yet, and I'm not expecting much, but for something I may use 4 times, $64 sounds a lot better than $250.
My total cost for 3x Swagman Upright carriers, Yakima Skyline towers, rails and tonneau cover kit, Truck Hero Elevate TS rails, and Truxedo ProX15 soft rolling tonneau cover is $1712.

If you go with the REtrax Cover, you are going to be spending that much on the cover itself, before the towers, rails and bike trays. Maybe a good idea if you bike a lot though.

[ExtraSlow]

Another wrinkle is that this year, either because of Covid or the Suez Canal crisis, or something, but most retails are out of stock on a lot of items. I needed these set up for mid-may at the latest, so I couldn't wait to see if more options showed up somewhere later.

Will post pics and review of the bike trays in a couple weeks when I actually use them for the first time.

[SKR]

I like projects like this where you've got to engineer stuff. It looks like it'll add downforce too so you'll be faster to the beer store next time there's a sale.

I'm too late for this because I'm an asshole, but Super Bee Truck Accessories in Wetaskiwin has been good for stuff like this for me.

[ExtraSlow]

Raven in Calgary has been good to me in the past. But always worth shopping around.
And now that UrbanX carries truxedo, they should be on your list for sure.

[prae]

Thanks for sharing what you implemented, ExtraSlow. I've been thinking about this a bunch lately.

I have a hitch receiver mounted tray-style bike rack I very much enjoy, but cannot use it when we're trailering, and it's pissing me off. Our last bumpy foray to spray lakes west left my shiny mountain bike scratched up.

Is there such a thing as a headache rack with a 2" hitch receiver? or some easy-ish way for me to use a hitch mount accessory above the bed of the truck? I already have a tri-fold tonneau (I don't love it, but don't hate it), and don't really want to drop $2k on a retrax plus buy more tray-style bike mounts- given I have that.

[ExtraSlow]

Works good.

[killramos]

I like parking on the lawn. BC move right there.