dfoxengr

Going to be building a bed rack for the 96 x-cab taco shortly. The bed has the factory plastic liner in it, and my issue is not wanting to drill into the liner or bed rails. Looking for a good way to attach a steel base frame to the bed without these drilling.
Main reason is so water does not seep under the liner.

There are a few screws holding the liner on, and there are the factory tie down rings in each corner.
I have a bed box up front as well that Ill need to negotiate around.

I am not sure this is possible, and might just have to drill in but still looking for suggestions.

An Idea would be to tie into my rear bumper which I made and extends forward to the rear tire (cut off 6" of bottom of bedside), and then tie into some non-existing sliders.


Bed rack with be versatile and will also need to be built out of the way of my in-bed tent (no $$ for a RTT). Rack will carry cargo (possibly safari rack), lights, awning, shovel, high-lift, etc. the usual.

Another main motivation for this is to add tie down points for when I haul stuff in the bed. Now there are literally 4 locations and that gives almost no freedom for tying anything down properly.

dfoxengr

almost thinking on getting into a half exo cage here. possibly not built to take a rollover though, for weight reasons.
the truck isnt a hardocre crawler, I just like trails and am getting more interested in short expo trips.

highonpottery

iTrader: (1)

i don't understand the concern with water getting under the bedliner. that'd be like being concerned with water getting in your bed at all - just crazy. if you're that concerned then remove your bedliner and lineX the thing, then use clamps to install your rack. still not gonna be anywhere near as strong as bolting it down. if your concern is with what the water getting under the bedliner will do to the holes you make for passing bolts through, that's different....but can be easily suppressed by painting the exposed metal after drilling.

i'd just make some clean holes with a holesaw and use some bolts that pass through the toprail. if you're that uber concerned with a hole in your bedliner along the top of the rail, put a cap on it and call it good. i had to drill holes to get my toolbox mounted - didn't want to use J-bolts and couldn't figure out how i'd get a nut on from under the liner. ended up passing the bolt upwards and put a piece of 3/4" wood on the top rail, permanently mounting 4 studs that i can mount my box with wingnuts on since i am constantly removing my box to haul things.

i thought about making a headache rack and tying it into sliders, but was talked out of it by fabricator since the length of the verticals would now be doubled, thus reducing the rigidity of the thing.

someday, if i plan on adding a rack or something similar, i'm mounting it on there with angle iron against the bed rail and leave some drilled, tapped holes in the top of that angle iron for mounting things like toolboxes.