Kuat Huk Half Tailgate Bike Pad for Trucks - 2 Bikes - 25" Wide

Video Transcript for Kuat Truck Bed Bike Racks Review - 2023 Nissan Titan KU49ZR

Hi, everyone, Aidan here at etrailer. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at the Kuat Huk Tailgate Pad and seeing how it fits on the back of our 2023 Nissan TITAN. This is gonna be their smallest tailgate pad they make, the half pad, and it only covers half the tailgate. So if you only need to carry one or two bikes and you don't wanna deal with a hitch-mounted bike rack or any other version of a truck bed bike rack, then this tailgate pad could be the one for you. I'm very partial to it myself, I've used a tailgate pad in this half size on my own truck a number of times, and I really like it, because we can have the bikes loaded up on one side, still see out the back window very easily, not extend really anything off the back of our truck besides our tire, and still have access to our backup camera and the handle for our tailgate when the bikes are unloaded. So for me, this is a really convenient way to carry your bikes, because if you've got a truck bed, you might as well use it, and it keeps the bikes a little bit more protected by partially being in the bed.

It makes it easier to park too. So if you're the type of person that leaves your bikes loaded up, ready to go, so if you're having a little extra time after work one day to go biking, you can, then this is a great way to do it, 'cause it's not sticking out like a hitch-mounted bike rack would. There's a strap on the back that'll hold the bike frame in, it's going to have this plastic cam buckle style. I don't love that it's plastic, but it does work pretty well, and it'll cinch down around the frame. But when we remove that, we can lift the bike up and away and get onto the trail, wherever we're biking.

So the setup process or the removal of the bike is pretty quick and simple. And with the bike unloaded, we can see all the extra padding, about an inch thick of foam padding on the front for our forks, inch thick on the top for the top of the tailgate, and then, also on the back where it'll make contact with our frame. I'll just go ahead and open up the tailgate, so you can see that a little bit easier. So all of this is gonna be making contact with the frame of our bike, giving it maximum protection and cushion, but also protecting the tailgate underneath. These straps can be moved around to any of these five loops to just customize our bike spacing.

So if we wanted to set them up side by side, if we have the room for that, great, we can maybe go towards the outside edge to give us maximum space with our backup camera, or we can space them out if we've got some bigger bikes, we can do that too. And the straps are long enough, if we needed to maybe feed them between two of these loops and hook up our bike in the middle, we could do that too. From the back, you can also see the straps that actually hold this in and around the tailgate. They just cinch into these plastic buckles on the outside or on the inside of your truck bed and feed through the gap between the tailgate and the bed, cinching down and tightening to hold the bikes in place. That setup process is pretty simple, you just gotta feed it up through the middle of the buckle and then down to the front.

It's a little easier to do when the tailgate is actually up, I think. But on the outside here, you've got these metal G-hooks that will hook into these sew-on loops, those loops have tons of reinforced stitching and welded seams around there, so they're gonna be very strong, and I don't think you'll have any issues with wear and tear on this over time. This TPU material on the outside is gonna be very easy to clean if you do get it dirty, but it's gonna be water repellent and resistant to just deterioration over time. And I like that it just looks good on the tailgate. That's one thing, that if you're gonna use a tailgate pad, a lot of them don't fit the best, but I think Kuat has done a great job with the Huk on all the different sizes, just making sure that it sits evenly on the tailgate. The nice matte black finish I think looks good, doesn't stick out too much, and the half size fits really well on the Nissan TITAN here, allowing us to use our backup camera and the handle, so if you do wanna leave it on the tailgate all the time, it's really not gonna be very in the way and it fits well too. That'll do it for our look at the Kuat Huk Tailgate Pad in the half size on our 2023 Nissan TITAN. Thanks for watching.