I purchased these bed stiffening brackets for my 2019 Tacoma from Amazon here:

They are quality brackets and easy to install in less than 20 minutes if you know what you're doing. You need to drill 3 holes on both sides to mount the brackets. Unfortunately, during the installation process I overtightened and stripped out one of the original OEM bolts and retaining clips that hold the tail light assembly.

I'm thinking I can just drive over to the nearby Toyota dealer and ask them for the parts, but when I called them, they don't seem to know the part numbers for bolts and clips like they did in the old days. (which were listed in my official Toyota T-100 pickup shop manuals, when I bought the truck brand new in 1995). My T-100 is in Hawaii. In California, I'm driving a 2019 Tacoma TRD 4x4 Off Road Double Cab

So after some online searching and asking around I found out that the replacement bolt size is M6-1.00 x 20mm (class 10.9), but more problematic was that I could not find the OEM clip part number and the parts person didn't understand what I was talking about or they didn't have them available or didn't want to be bothered with such a small item. (typical customer service it seems now a days)

Anyways on a lark, I went over to Autozone and can you believe it, they have the parts I need right in one of their aisles. I found both the bolt and the clip. Here is a picture of the items that Autozone had which were perfect for the replacements. The original washers are stuck on the original bolts so if you are going to replace the bolts, you should replace the washer with better ones.

You can pound the washers off of the old bolt, and then drill out the hole to 1/4" so you can reuse them, but it may be better to replace them with stainless steel 1/4" washers which you can leave raw or spray paint matte black. My recommendation is to replace the two bolts on both sides anyways, since the old bolts that hold the tail light assembly are of such poor quality. You don't have to replace the undamaged clips.

Overall, I believe it is a good addition to my truck. Even after one year of just mall crawling around, I noticed during the bracket installation that the passenger side of the bed was already off a 1/4" or so.


autozone parts