Overland Truck Bed Rack for Pace Edwards UltraGroove Tonneau Covers - 400 lbs - Dodge

Video Transcript for Pace Edwards UltraGroove Tonneau Cover Overland Truck Bed Rack Review

Hi everyone, Aidan here with etrailer.com. Today we're taking a look at the Pace Edwards overlanding rack. Now, this is going to be a little bit shorter than a typical ladder rack. We don't have clearance over the cab of our truck here but it's gonna be great for tents and other rooftop accessories that we don't wanna lift up as high. And it's gonna put it a little bit lower, more accessible to us on the ground while still getting it up above our bed. And it's designed to work with our UltraGroove Tonneau covers from Pace Edwards.

So we've got it slid into the T tracks on the bed rails here. So we've got our Tonneau cover here covering up the bed storage, keeping everything locked up and safe in there with our larger accessories up top. Let's check it out. Now right away I wanna point out an issue that we had. These bars up here are kind of a weird size.

As far as the overall width goes, that's pretty normal, 2 1/2 inches. As far as the height goes, they're gonna be right at an inch and a half. And if you count in this weather strip on top that's gonna add a little bit of thickness to it too. So we actually had a lot of issues getting the accessories we have down here in the shop to actually fit around these bars. A lot of clamp around accessories just aren't big enough to reach these taller bars and get a good grasp on them.

We've got a Yakima tent and a Thule tent that we both tried and neither of them worked out too well. The one thing I will say about that Thule tent is the fact that it uses some bolts that come down and a plate underneath, so that's a pretty easy fix. You can get some longer bolts at the hardware store that extend down far enough and you can tighten it out from there. But for me it's kind of a pain that you have to do that and a bit of a loss for the Pace Edwards here. But like any other ladder rack or overlanding rack that attaches in the T slots of our Tonneau cover here, we still have that full use of our Tonneau cover.

So I can just push this open like that and gain full access into the bed of my truck and have all of that stuff covered up inside with the larger accessories on top. So it still fills that purpose. And the good thing is if you don't have clamp round accessories, maybe you have T slot accessories, this has the compatibility to work with those. And in that case, you don't need to worry about any sort of bar size at all, you just need the T track and your accessories and you're good to go. So, personally, if you go with this rack, I would recommend looking for T slot accessories primarily, so, you just don't even have to think about the size of the crossbar. Now something I do like about the crossbars is the end caps here. These function as tie down points too. So we've got a slot here that we can get an S hook into or even feed a rope or something through, so if we have a platform rack up here or a cargo basket and we want to use this as a tie down point, it's available to us to do that. The other thing here you might be thinking is that it actually does stick up quite a bit. That could be good for a sort of load stop. But if you have something like a tent that actually flips and folds over, this might be a clearance issue. No worries, you can take out these two screws on the end, flip it upside down and then you don't have that clearance issue. One thing with the T track is that the weather stripping in here is just one solid piece. So if you have a variety of different accessories, you're gonna have to make a lot of different cuts to actually cut this to size. But if you have just one thing you plan on putting up here primarily, you can cut this to size and leave that accessory in or just have it ready to go whenever you put that accessory on or take it off. This is a fixed height, so what you've got here is basically what you have to use and it is gonna stick up exactly 17 inches from the base of our Tonneau cover rails here. So that's the kind of height you're working with. Again, we don't have clearance over the cab. So for something like a kayak where we've got a longer item, I wouldn't use this. I'd go for a ladder rack that actually has clearance over that. Same with carrying something like lumber or a ladder, any sort of elongated load. You probably want to go with a traditional ladder rack. And even though you don't get height adjustment, you do get the adjustment for your crossbar spread. The track for the Tonneau cover here runs the entire length, so these can be slid back and forth to fit any crossbar spread we need for our specific accessories. Overall, it is gonna be really well constructed though. Everything's solid, really sturdy. It's got a 400 pound weight capacity on here and that is the dynamic weight capacity. So that's when you're moving. So as long as your stuff that you're loading up is within that weight limit, you should be all good. It's off road and on road tested. The crossbars here are aluminum, so they're gonna hold up well to the elements. And the uprights and end caps are a powder coated steel so those should have good weather resistance too. So, I have talked about how this isn't necessarily my favorite system. So, what would I go with instead If I we're looking for something low clearance, I'd maybe check out the Yakima OutPost. That's gonna be a little bit lower than this one. Still fixed, but just be a better sized crossbar, I think, maybe a bit of a better design and just work with more things whilst still retaining that nice low profile appearance. If I need something that can do a bit of both, around this height and a regular ladder rack height, I'd check out the Yakima OverHaul. Both options from them are really well constructed. They give you better options and I think they just fit a little bit better. They are gonna be a fair bit more expensive. So if you don't need all that, you don't need the adjustability, you don't need all these specific things to work with it, you just need one accessory to work for a basic fixed rack, go with this, it's gonna work. But for me, I like having options and the Yakima system for me gives me those options. Now, even though this has a simpler design with fewer points of adjustment, that is not a bad thing, especially during the install, because there's just less to do here. It's quicker to set up. So let's go through that process right now. We'll start our installation off in the truck bed here, installing the rails. We've got the first one installed up front towards the cab and we'll go through the process for this rear crossbar here. We're gonna take our two carriage bolts. We've got tons of them in the kit, they're all the same. We're just gonna take two of them and come to the end of the Tonneau cover rail here and just slide it in the larger opening, and back to about here. I've already kind of got this measured out, so just set it loosely in place and we'll get our measurements in a second. We can take our upright here and we want this, it's kind of angled, you can kind of see the slant right here. We want the slanted portion facing inward, in towards each other. So our front one is facing towards the tailgate and our rear one is facing towards the cab. We'll slide that over the carriage bolts with the threads poking up and follow that up with a flat washer on either one and a nut threaded on top there. And then we can get it loosely tightened down, enough to where we can still move it back and forth. Once this is mostly tightened down, but we can still move it. We wanna measure it out. I'm actually going the distance between the two bases here. If you're looking for a specific crossbar spread, measure from up here where the crossbar is actually gonna sit. We're not looking for a super specific measurement there, just a general range. So I'm just gonna let the tape measure sit right here while I tighten it down, so I know it's gonna stay still. And then we can get it fully secured. So we can take our crossbars and I'm actually gonna set them on top of the uprights upside down. That's gonna expose the channels underneath. Then we can take our carriage bolts and slide in. There's two channels. Each one will get four carriage bolts total. So, we've got two on each side right here that'll go to this upright and then we'll do two on each side over here for this upright. Then we can carefully flip it upside down. And we've got four holes on the top of the upright that'll line up with those carriage bolts. Just do your best to get them all to go through like that on either side. You might have to kind of get in there and adjust them around a bit to get them to all pop through. If you didn't get your spacing perfect, which is totally fine. And then we can kind of loosely adjust our side to side here. If you wanna grab a tape measure and measure your overhang on either side and compare the two measurements to get it exact, you can, or you can just eyeball it. Right about here looks perfect. And we can go underneath to secure it. Underneath, we're gonna attach a flat washer and a nut to the threads of the carriage bolt here. Since there's some pretty limited clearance, I'm actually gonna drop that nut into a socket, kind of place the flat washer on top and then I can just poke it into place and hand tighten it from here where it's a bit easier to do. And then we can go back through later and fully tighten everything down. And then once we're tightening them down, you can just repeat that process for all of the remaining nuts. And we'll be good to go. Last thing is the end caps. If you have T slot accessories, I'd do that first. Just take the weather stripping out, slide 'em in, trim this up to length, and then we can attach this because this will partially block that channel for certain accessories. Now to do that, we've just got two screws that line up with threaded holes. And I will say the screws that they provided us didn't fit, they we're too small, so we had to pick up our own. So just be mindful of that when you do get this that that might be an issue you have too. So just be cautious of that, be mindful of it and know that you might have to get your own hardware. Then we'll just tighten these down with our Phillips head screwdriver and repeat that on the other side. And once everything's set up, it's really quick to just take those nuts from down here off and just lift the whole assembly off of those carriage bolts and slide the carriage bolts out. We don't have to loosen up anything up here. We can leave it set and tightened down for our specific setup. So then when we're ready to go and reinstall it, just slide the carriage bolts in, drop this down into place and tighten it down here and you're good to go. And then with everything attached, we can roll out our Tonneau cover. Have all out gear locked up inside the bed of the truck, nice and safe with all of our accessories, like a tent or a bike rack, up top, elevated above the bed where it's not gonna be in the way of our cargo down here. And overall, I think this system is a fine fit. It definitely lacks some of the premium features like you might find in something like the Yakima OutPost or the OverHaul. Those ones, they just have nicer features, more adjustability and I think a little bit easier to work with. These ones are gonna be fixed upright, which might not be a concern to you. If you've got just one accessory, you know where you want it and you know it's gonna live here, then fine. You don't need the adjustability, you can just have it set. And if you have T tracked accessories or clamp around accessories, these larger, more awkwardly sized crossbars might not be a concern for you either. For me personally, I like the options that other brands give me. I like a more normal size crossbar that will just work with more accessories right out of the box. I don't have to think about it as much because they're kind of designed to work with everything. These are gonna be a little bit more specialized. You're gonna have to take some extra care to make sure your accessories are compatible and if you get a new accessory make sure that you can make it work with this rack. So it's really just down to that. Do you want the options or are you fine getting a more basic rack that will work with the select few accessories that you need it to And that'll do it for our look at the Pace Edwards overlanding rack. Thanks for watching..