Thule Truck Bed Bike Racks Review - 2011 Ford F-150

Review of the Thule Truck Bed Bike Racks on a 2011 Ford F-150

Today on our 2011 Ford F150, we're doing a test fit of the Thule Gate Mate Tailgate Pad and Bike Rack. That part number is TH824. Now we already have it laid on top of our tailgate here. We are first going to show you how to secure that down and then we'll go over some things that you can actually put on our tailgate pad and then also how we secure that down as well. The first thing we'll do, since my arms aren't long enough to reach all the way down to the bed even if I lift up, we're going to open up our tailgate here. Now I will hold the tailgate pad with my hip and reach down, grab my strap, and straighten that out. Then I'll just feed it through underneath my tailgate and in between the tailgate and the truck bed here.

It's just going to come up between the two. If you have a truck bed liner that's actually completely connected, it goes over the lip here of your tailgate or of your truck bed, you may have a little bit of an issue feeding that through. Since we don't have one on our truck today, it is pretty simple. I'm just going to tighten that down a bit and then we'll move along to the other side over here and just do the same thing, just feed that up in between the two. Then now we feed it through our buckle, we're going to go up through the back one and then down through the front. I will lift up and close our tailgate.

As you can see, we still have a lot of slack in those two straps there. We step up, we can tightened these down a bit more. We don't want to tighten it down too much because then it won't be even when we get that middle one in place. Now for our middle, since we don't have that truck bed liner, we can actually just feed this up through in between the tailgate and the truck bed. We're just going to feed it as far as we can to prevent it from slipping back out. Now we can step back up here and secure that to the buckle.

Now with that one in place, we'll tighten down alternate 00:03:09 our straps so our pad is secure on our tailgate there. Now I've got a bike here that I'm going to load up first. To load up our bike, we want to turn our handle bars all the way to one side so when we lift, we'll set it in between the tire and the rest of the bike here. It's going to wedge in between the two halves so it sits nice and secure down there. Then we can get our surf board and with our tailgate pad here, it's also going to protect that tailgate from any scuffs or scratches so you can actually slide it along the tailgate pad instead of enter our truck bed so you won't have any wear or tear on the edge there. Now a great thing with the tailgate is that the tailgate pad, we have those straps here that we can secure down any gear that we might have on our tailgate pad. If you don't have any straps, we do have some available on our site for that.

With all your gear strapped down and ready, you're all ready to hit the road with your all new Gate Mate Tailgate Pad and Bike Rack, part number TH824 on your 2011 Ford F150.