Kuat Ibex Customizable Overland Truck Bed Rack - Aluminum - 300 lbs

Video Transcript for Kuat Ibex Adjustable Overland Truck Bed Rack Installation - 2015 Toyota Tacoma

Hi everyone, Aidan here with etrailer. Today we're gonna be taking a look at and later showing you how to install this Kuat Ibex Overland rack on our 2015 Toyota Tacoma. This is gonna be designed for the short bed version of the Tacoma but you can also get one for the longer bed version. Both of them are gonna be designed for the mid-size truck though and works with our Tacoma whether we have the utility track rails on the inside or don't have those and just need a clamp around mount, let's check it out. So this is gonna be a really solid rack from Kuat. Kuat makes a great product with all of our bike racks and everything, and this is no different.

It's got a strong fit on the truck bed so it's rock solid and it's gonna be a great way to mount up a variety of different accessories. You've got crossbars on the top so you can mount things like roof-mounted accessories whether it be a bike rack, a basket, a tent or you can use the ecosystem of Ibex accessories that are available for this like MOLLE panels on the side or a jack mount or even something like a bike rack that uses their Piston SR bike rack, mounts it up and allows you to carry a bike. The options are really limitless here because you've got all those ecosystem options within the Ibex, but also just the universal options for clamping onto crossbars. And because this attaches to your bed it's gonna be a lot more capable than something like a roof rack where you're gonna be limited on weight capacity and adjustment. On road, we're gonna be working with 600 pounds of weight capacity and off-road it can handle 300 pounds.

So obviously for off-road use that does diminish the capability just a little bit. But for a simple setup with a tent, some MOLLE panels and a bike, I think you're gonna be more than capable of carrying all of that. Just watch out for those capacities so you don't overload it. Now as it sits right now this is going to be a mid height rack and the height is going to sit just below the roof line of our Tacoma so we're not adding extra height to our vehicle with the rack empty. When you load accessories on top, say for like a tent obviously that will change the height added but it's not going to be near as much as it would be with a full height ladder rack.

Now if you're looking to keep this as low profile as possible though, there is some adjustment built into this in the form of these risers on the side. We've got it fully assembled right now in the tallest configuration, but during the initial setup whenever you're pulling this out of the box you can opt to not install these sections right here or you can go back through and remove them if you wanted. I figure during that first time setup you're probably gonna do one or the other and leave it there. So this is what it looks like in the tallest position but you can bring that height down a fair bit if you take these middle sections out giving you a much more low profile appearance. Personally though, I like this setup quite a bit because it does give pretty much full access into the bed underneath.

It's a lot easier to reach in from the side and grab stuff out and it's gonna be a good fit on the different vehicles that this works with. The aluminum construction is gonna keep things lightweight and rust resistant and that powder coat over the top gives us a really nice clean look that fits great with our truck today. As far as other options for mounting goes if you do have a tonneau cover this does have options for adapters. If you have a Retrax tonneau cover that has the T-track on the side, you can pick up an adapter to make the Ibex work with that. Otherwise, this will mount just directly to the bed in the form of clamps or channel mount if you've got that utility track on your Tacoma. So let's check out that process and see what it looks like to put the Ibex onto your truck. So we've got the rack mostly assembled right now but we're gonna walk you through the process of getting it onto the Tacoma. On the top of the crossbars here, there's going to be some bolts that are in this orange block. So just loosen those up, one for each crossbar and that's going to allow us to open up this crossbar here and extend or retract it to fit our truck bed. Next, we'll grab an extra set of hands. With that extra set of hands, we can lift it into place from the sides. Just remembering that those crossbars are loose. So we're gonna set it on the bed rail on Tom's side there and while he holds it in, I can pull it towards me. While it's level on the ground it's actually gonna be a lot easier to pull this out so you can kind of eyeball the measurement or break out a tape measure. But once you get it up there and there's that force kind of holding it down, it's not as easy to slide as the instructions may make it seem. So we've got ours pulled out about where we think we need it and that should get us a lot closer to at least let it rest on the bed rails so we'll get it back up right now. Now it's mostly sitting up there. You can see we've got a little bit more room to pull this out but since it holds itself, it's a lot easier to just come up here and pull that out to where it needs to be on the front and back. Once you have the positioning you like side to side turn your attention to the underside of the crossbars. We're gonna have these small blocks that we can slide into the underside of that channel. And another one that we can slide into the side channel over by the uprights. It's a little hard for me to see that, but get that into position and your kit's gonna come with this long bracket and some short screws that will thread into those blocks we just added and act as extra supports. So get those installed on all four locations. And of course re-tighten the bolts up top by those orange blocks that we loosened before just to keep your crossbar spread in place. For clamping this to the vehicle, we've got our utility track that we need to get this lined up with. So I'm just gonna loosen these screws and allow us to slide this in the channel on the Ibex, right about there is fine. We'll pop off the end cap on our utility track channel and I'm gonna slide one of these blocks in for the cab side and we'll show you this one right now 'cause it's just a little easier to film. We'll get this lined up and we can take this large block, insert that up into the piece there, and screw this into the threaded block in that channel behind it. Now, once those are loosely in place we can also take our larger bolt with a flat washer drop it down through the top and thread it into the block underneath. Thus joining together all of these pieces into one unified piece. Then we'll go back through, tighten up these, these and the top screw as well. Once you've repeated that process that we showed you on one side for the other three clamping locations, you're done. The setup process is honestly not too bad. Getting it from the ground to the vehicle is the only thing you need an extra set of hands for. And from there, it's just a simple process of repeating each step pretty much four times. But the finished result is something that's rock solid on the bed and gives you a lot of function on our 2015 Toyota Tacoma. Thanks for watching.