Thule Xscape Bed Rail Mounting Kit

Video Transcript for Checking Out the Thule Xscape Bed Rail Mounting Kit

Hello neighbor, this is Curt with etrailer, and today, we're gonna take a look at the bed rail kit for your Thule Xscape ladder rack with the DTT towers. So if you're looking for the Thule Xscape ladder rack and you want to add it onto your truck, as long as you've got kind of the more standard bed rails on it, not a ton of cover or any kind of like a sport track or anything like that inside the bed, then this particular bed rail kit is going to be what you need in order to get the escape onto your truck. And it's a really, really simple little process in order to do it. Just to show you what we've got here is, we do have one of our DTT towers right here, so it's got this big lip that's gonna go on the inside of the rail. We've got a rubber pad that's gonna attach to this and provide some cushion support underneath those towers. And we're gonna have a couple of J clamps with pads for those as well, and the bolts to put 'em in along with the ratcheting tool provided by Thule.

So we'll start things off by putting our rubber pad on, and as you can see, there are openings at the bottom of our tower here. There's some little knobs and nibs to go into those as well. What I would start with, though, after putting a couple of these on, I would start by inserting these two round points here in the middle. They can prove to be kind of the most difficult going in there. These more square rectangle tabs, actually, go in really easily.

So if you need a little bit of soapy water to help you get that on there, go for it. But right now, we're just gonna put it on there. I'm gonna pop in those round ones best I can. There we go. And then I'm gonna work my way out along the edges until they're all popped into place.

Next thing I'm gonna do is take one of my J clamps and the pad that goes with it. And as you can see, it's shaped with that little notch, cut out of it, just like it is on the actual clamp. All we're gonna do is slip those right over the top of them, just like so. This is gonna give us a little bit of cushion underneath our rail when everything's clamped down. We want everything to be secure, but not damage our bed rails as well.

So next, what we'll do is we'll take our tower and we're gonna put it on just like this. Now, underneath our rail, just depending on the truck you have, there could be all kinds of little attachments and obstacles under there. So what I'm gonna try to do is line this up in a way that I can make sure that I could fit my clamp underneath there without running into one of those obstacles and get it flushed to the underside of the rail. But once I figure out a good spot for that, I could just pop this up just like that. I'm gonna grab one of my bolts with the washer on it and we're gonna drop that right in. Now I'm just gonna get this snug without getting it too tight, 'cause I wanna allow for some adjustment. Whenever you are installing this ladder rack, you gotta make sure that your support towers are directly across from one another. So a lot of times, you can find your anchor point down underneath the rail there. There's other times where you just gotta take a measurement and figure out where you're going. So until I get both the clamps on there, I'm just gonna get these bolts snug, but movable. Now, once you have one clamp in and snug down, it's gonna have a decent amount of support. I would still have an arm up here like this to kind of help do that, but I'm gonna get my second clamp in and we're gonna do the same thing. We're just gonna get it snug without being tight, making sure we have a little room to maneuver. Now, one of the things that I want to create when I'm doing this is kind of the widest crossbar spread possible. So I've got my clamps underneath, kinda, this one here is anchored about as far back as I can get it, but I've got a lot of room in this slot up top to move it back. So I'm just gonna adjust this all the way back. And if you've got your front bars adjusted as far forward as possible, this is gonna be what gives you, your maximum crossbar spread. Now with this other one here, I don't wanna make these so that they're so close together. I'm gonna spread 'em out a little bit. So I'm gonna move this clamp all the way up to the front, but I've got this now in a position where it's as moved as far back or as close to the tailgate as I can get it. Now at this point, I'm gonna go ahead and grab the torquing tool provided by Thule and I'm gonna get these tightened down really good. Now I'm gonna tighten these down as much as I can by hand. There is a torque spec in the instructions for Thule, and each bolt, when you put together this ladder rack, has a different torque spec. So pay close attention to your instructions and torque accordingly. And once those are tightened down, you can move on to the rest of your installation. Now it is important to know that this rail kit is specifically for the DTT towers. If you have a a tunnel cover with a T slot on the rail, you're gonna need a different kit altogether. But we do have it right here at etrailer. So you can pick it up here if you need to. So that was a look at the bed rail kit for your Thule Xscape ladder rack with more standard bed rails on your truck. And if you still have questions about it after watching this video, go ahead and leave those in the comments below. We would love to answer those questions for you. It'll just help you and others just like you to make the best decision for yourself. Once again, this is Curt with etrailer. Thanks for stopping by.