MT5817 Truck Bed Rack for Mountain Top Tonneau Covers - Chevy/GMC

Video Transcript for Mountain Top Tonneau Covers Truck Bed Rack Installation - 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 1500

Hi, everyone. Aiden here at the trailer. Today we're gonna be taking a look at this Truck Bed Rack for your Mountaintop Tonneau Covers. Now it's gonna be designed specifically for the Chevy and GM truck bed racks, or the tonneau covers, excuse me, because the rack is specifically sized to reach across. There's really no adjustment side-to-side when installing it. You can just mount it up, and it's going to reach the length across to the other track, making the install process very simple.

But that does mean if you have a different truck with a different cover, you might wanna just check the compatibility list of part numbers and make sure it matches up to the one that you have on your truck. Let's check it out. Now, you can get this in a kit with the tonneau cover from mountaintop or here at etrailer, and if you choose to just get the tonneau cover, you can always install these crossbars after the fact. I think it's a great way to really expand the function of your truck, because with the tonneau cover, we get that covered lock storage keeping everything in the bed secure and away from prying eyes. But with the rack up top, we can mount some other things in addition to all that covered storage beneath.

Maybe something like a bike rack, a basket, or a rooftop tent. Really, the possibilities are endless. As long as you keep it within the 165 pound weight capacity, you should be good. But I think something like this adds a lot of function, because let's say your hitch is occupied, maybe with a ball mount or towing a camper, and we wanna carry some bikes with us. Rather than mounting those bikes to the roof of your truck or to the back of your camper, where it might be a little more difficult to do, you can put a bike rack on the crossbars here where it's still very much reachable, but it's not gonna get in the way of our cargo space beneath, or in the way of our hitch.

The end caps on the crossbars do lock up for security, and when you remove those, it's a pretty snug fit, but that'll expose the two bolts that we use to mount this up. If we loosen these, the blocks inside the T-track on the tonneau cover will loosen up, and we can slide this front to back and get the exact crossbar spread we need for our accessories. The other thing this exposes is our T-track. We can always use clamp around accessories with these crossbars, but if you wanted to slide something into the T-track, you could peel back the weather strip, cut it to length, and put it back in around your accessories. If you choose to just do clamp around accessories though, this will provide some cushion and some grip for anything that we mount up top and clamp around.

The crossbars themselves are a black powder coated aluminum. The powder coat makes it match the rest of the tonneau cover very nicely, and the aluminum's gonna keep it lightweight and corrosion resistance, so we don't have to worry about that over time. We still get full use of our tonneau cover underneath, whether we're retracting it, or pulling it back out. You can see everything fits under the crossbars very well, and without any obstruction. Here's a good couple inches here of space, so plenty of room for any sort of clamp around accessories we might have. Like I mentioned, the installation is really straightforward. I won't fully go through the process right now since we've already got it installed, but essentially, what you're gonna do is just take off the end caps to your cover, and I'll loosen this up right now with that 10 millimeter socket. But you can see in here we've got some blocks that will go into our T-track. Just slide those into position. Your kit's gonna come with these plastic mats that will basically sit between the rail of the tonneau cover and the mounting foot of the crossbar, just to reduce any metal-on-metal contact. We didn't install ours today 'cause this isn't staying installed. But then, you just place the crossbar down on top of it and bolted in. You can see those blocks will just slide right out of the end, and that's the piece that slides in. So the adjustments are very straightforward. So is the install process. If you wanted to fully remove them to get full access to your truck bed, maybe we're hauling something in the back of the bed that's a bit taller and it'd be easier to just get these out of the way or slide them all the way above the canister, we could do that. But that's how you get them installed. And that's really all there is to it. I think it's a great addition to your Mountain Top Tonneau Cover if you've got it. The one thing I'd recommend is just be extra careful that if you've got a Ford truck or a GM or a Chevy, you just get the right rails for the right cover, just because they are custom sized for each truck, so that you don't have to make any adjustments on those feet in the crossbars, giving you this nice flush look that I think compliments the cover quite well. If you're looking into other options, I might recommend looking into some of the crossbar kits from Rhino Rack or Yakima. You might be able to get a slightly better weight capacity out of those, because these are a little bit limited, and the cover itself can support more weight if you had it. But with that all said, I do think it's a great way to mount up your extra accessories and still have that nice, functioning tonneau cover underneath. Thanks for watching.