DeeZee Aluminum Headache Rack with Sliding Load Stops - Black Powder Coat

Video Transcript for DeeZee Aluminum Headache Rack Review

Hi there, truck owners. Today we're going to be taking a look at DeeZee's all aluminum headache rack with adjustable load stops. These are available in either a black powder coat finish, textured black powder coat finish, or a silver powder coat finish. The main purpose of your headache rack is to protect your back windshield. So we've gone ahead and loaded up a bunch of junk in the back of the truck that we're going to haul off to the dump. So I've got that stuff just kind of tossed back there.

Now, normally I'd recommend you always strap down anything that you have in the back and have it properly secured, but we're just going through a scenario, you're just trying to do something really fast. We threw some stuff back in there. We made a mistake. We're going to go for a drive now and go through a panic stop situation and see how our headache rack is going to save us inside.So that was pretty intense there. The noise it made slamming the rack was pretty loud, but in all honestly compared to some of the other headache racks that I've tested with this, the noise it made is considerably less in the kind of the impact you kind of feel or where it hits the headache rack in the back, you don't even notice here.

This rack feels a lot sturdier than some of the competitors I've tested. In the inside here we're all okay. The windshield didn't bust out, there's no glass flying at us, so I'd say it all in all it did exactly what it's intended to do.So we're now back from our test drive here, wanted to give a look at the rack here because we did a stop pretty hard and had our pallets here slam into it pretty good, but I see no marks on here. The powder coating on it seemed to have hold up pretty well. Compared to other ones, I've noticed a lot of the other ones when you shake them you can actually get quite a bit of flex out of it.

This one here, that is solid onto your truck. It definitely feels sturdier than a lot of the competitors.Now what you saw out there on the test course was really a worst case scenario, as always you should have anything in the back of properly strapped down. And your headache rack provides great places to do that. Our pallets here, they normally would take up a lot of space in the bed of our truck but here we can stack them up and strap them right to our rack here because the mesh here is nice and sturdy, giving us a good tie down point and we free up a lot of space in the back of our truck by stacking up these tall items.Another great feature and the one that I actually find myself using the most is the load stops here on the top. If you're hauling anything that's excessively long, I don't like to have things hanging off the back of my truck, because then I got to remember my truck is longer than it was before.

I got to pay attention when turning and also when changing lanes on the highway. By keeping everything in the bed and putting it over the cab, I don't have to worry about any of that. The only thing I've got to remember is to unload before I go to pull in my garage at home.Now I do have the load here in the middle and I like to be able to position it there so that way I don't have to worry about weight or anything being offset, but I do want to mention that if you have a third brake light on your truck, you may not want to block that so people behind you know what you're doing. My trucks old enough to where I don't have a third brake light. The light here is actually just a cab light. The load stops are going to be adjustable all the way from edge to edge, so if you've got very wide items, that's no big deal, but they're also adjustable inwards, so if you've got something small, you can keep that clamp tight.I really liked that feature because a lot of the other headache racks just have stationary load stops at the corner, at the top on each side and it's great and you get the hauling capabilities, but with this you can really fine tune it to ensure that your load is definitely going to stay in place. With the other style, I've actually used those on this truck before and I was hauling some stuff home and I had some siding components that was strapped to it and the wind kind of caught it and actually knocked it up over the side and it was hanging down here. If I was able to position it here towards the center I would've felt a lot more comfortable.And there's also a sizeable hole as well as multiple braces here to give you locations to attach your strap to. Now we had used the mesh to hold our pallets in place, but there's also tie down points on the braces that sit on top of your side rails. We'll have four on each side with these slotted holes here and this is going to be an even stronger, more durable tie down point, so if you've got something really heavy, maybe like a toolbox loaded full of tools that you're bringing home, you'll want to use one of these rather than the mesh.It's a solid aluminum construction so you don't have to worry about it rusting and it also means it's going to be lightweight. So we're also not adding much to the payload of our vehicle when we install it. To further protect the aluminum DeeZee's placed a powder coat finish on it, this gives it a nice look to help it match your truck. To also help give your truck a rugged look, it's got a diamond plate here at the bottom, which I like having it down here towards the bulkhead because most of your heavier stuff isn't going to be as tall so you've got more support down here. Then you've got your mesh here higher up, which allows you to easily see through it when you're driving down the road. The mesh is also going to protect your windshield from anything that's going to come in here.Now, the video that we took when we we're test driving it is really a worst case scenario, but what I find that I like this best for is I often feel my truck up with a load full of wood and I don't want to have to pay attention to when I'm just tossing it back there. I want to get that done. It's cold outside. I want to get in my heat, so I toss it back here and if it bounces off this, no big deal. My windshield's still intact.The hold downs go in a T-slot track that runs all the way across the top and down the sides of our rack. This is nice because you can add additional accessories to it. Let's say we want to add some lights to the top, four fold lights in the front, or maybe pointing back at the cargo we have in the back and maybe add some additional eyelets to the side for more tie down points.It's a quick and easy installation. It's held in place down in your stake pockets using a rubberized crush washer that expands holding it in place inside the stake pocket. And then for a further layer of support on your rails to ensure that there's no pivoting, you will have to drill a hole here in the side of the rail to install one bolt, but this minor drilling, I prefer over many of the other racks out there that require you to drill down on the top of your bed rails, because once you drill on the top, if you ever want to take your rack off, you're always going to see that hole. Here on the inside, it's pretty unnoticeable and you can see you've already got factory holes here in the side rail, so the additional hole we drilled really just kind of blends in and looks like it was supposed to be there.You can see here our rubber bushing where it attaches to our foot plate. This bushing will fit into your stake pocket and when tightened down it will expand keeping it secure in the stake pocket. Now one of the things you do want to keep in mind if you have a toolbox is that it may or may not fit on here. It can sit on top of the rails that holds our headache rack in place, but due to the spacing, it may not fit. My toolbox is just a little bit too wide to go back in place. And that completes our look at DeeZee's all aluminum headache rack with adjustable load stops.