Rhino-Rack Reconn-Deck Truck Bed Rack - Aluminum - 330 lbs - 59" Deck Crossbars

Video Transcript for Rhino-Rack Reconn-Deck Overland Truck Bed Rack Installation - 2021 Toyota Tacoma

What's up everybody, it's AJ, with etrailer.com. Today we're checking out the Rhino-Rack Reconn-Deck Bed Rack system on our 2021 Toyota Tacoma. So it's gonna be a good way to maximize your bed. You see, we got gear out here in the bed. And now we have the rails up on top, to add other accessories to it, just to take more advantage of what we got. Let's check it out.

The Reconn-Deck system is made to be very customizable for whatever you need it for. So, you can see we've got quite a few different things on top today, we got the ski snowboard carrier, we got a shovel holder, and we're even carrying a bike. Now you might not use it the same way, but that's the whole point. You can kinda do whatever you want with it. So with it being so modular, you can add those parts and mix them up and use them how you want.

Another thing, and it's also customizable, if you come down here and look at the track. Let's take a closer look how it fits in here, you see that it slides right along in there. And you have these teeth portions here, and that means you can adjust the height. So if this isn't the height you want it at, you want it a little bit lower and more low profile, you can drop it down and get it to about there in that slot and drop it all down that way. It's a little more level, or just low-profile here on the top of your bed.

Let's head up top and take a closer look at the Reconn-Deck Bars. I'm gonna unlock it with the key, pop off the cap here at the end, and as you can see here there's several spots where you can run T-track accessories. So, you have four parts right there. One on each side, one on top and one bottom, just to add any more of those accessories you want to add to your bars. For example, you can take a couple eyelets, slide them in there and tighten them down, and we have extra tie-down points here along this side if you need it there or tie some down in the bed, we'll put them on the bottom side too.

You'd have to slide that in before you put the towers, but still that's in there. The side in that track, you can use all these at the same time, which gives you plenty of options for any accessory you'd want to add with it. There's even gonna be slots here on the towers that you can use to add other accessories. These are gonna be a little different on adding them as a T-track, so not everyone might work, but Rhino-Rack offers plenty of accessories that use this slot to add onto the side, making this usable space now too. Now, if you look at the bike rack we have up here in the T-tracks. One nice thing is that these T-tracks do accept other accessories other than Rhino-Rack. This isn't a Rhino-Rack bike rack, but we got it up there, slides in there just fine. So, if you have a bunch of accessories already that use T-tracks and they're not all Rhino-Rack, they still can work with these bars. Now looking at the construction of it, it is a black powder coat, aluminum. That's gonna go for the towers themselves and the bars. They feel very sturdy. I have confidence that they aren't gonna last. They're not flimsy. I can shake the whole truck back and forth by these towers. So you know that they're gonna be installed in there properly and have a good hold on there. And this is gonna hold up when you leave them out there in the elements. One thing with black powder coat finish though, sometimes it's used to cover up metal that once it's scraped and exposed, it's gonna rust or corrode. That's not gonna be an issue on these because it is aluminum, so the elements aren't gonna bother it. So even if you do scrape some of-- Like a gash out of there or something like that, and you can see the exposed aluminum, it's not gonna bother it. Overall, its got a weight capacity of 330 pounds. Now that is with the Reconn-Deck bars on top, you can get this at a different kit that has the arrow bars on top instead, and that's gonna reduce it to 220 pounds. So just keep that in mind on which ones you have and what accessories you can use. Now, if you get the Arrow bar kit, that might be more-- Lending itself to the accessories, you already had that aren't T-tracks. So that's gonna be easier to get those strap around the arrow bars far easier than using the T-track on top. But it's not gonna be as customizable as this one, because of all the extra tracks we kind of already talked about. Let's start with some measurements. So what we did when we set this up originally, we got 14 inches in between the cab and this front right here, that gave us more room for our accessories. You couldn't have this right up against the glass, because you guys are gonna see our ski's stick out. That would have been a problem if we would have some kind of cargo basket, it would have come out to about here anyway. So you don't want it right up against there. So again, that's where those 14 inches here are good for. And then from center to center of the bar here, we've gotta set up for 28 inches, which is good, 'cause that's right there in the sweet spot for most accessories are gonna fit within that range. So it's all good to go to add stuff on top. Real quick in the bed measure, we do have it in its highest position right now, so this is high as the towers can go. We're gonna go from the bed all the way down to the raised portion there. And to the bottom of our rails is 30 inches. So that's how much space we have here to work with. You can see with our stuff, our cargo put in underneath, plenty of room, plenty of head room to slide that in there, wasn't really in the way. Now I will say about 32 inches where it starts to come in towards the bed. So if it was lower, you might have an issue there with that section. But the way it is right now, plenty of room to slide stuff underneath there. Even if you had clamps or something here at the bottom so that the shovel is not close to our cargo. First thing we wanna do, is remove our cap here on the end of our track on the inside of the bed. That is so when you slide on the blocks that are required to install the base rails. Now we took out our tie-in points, just so we can slide the blocks all the way up and install this front one. And now we can put those back in and leave them on the inside. If we want to do that, if we wanna to still use them. So I'm just gonna go do that now, back in the track, slide it more towards the center. Now, with those in the center, I can take our silver blocks and slide those into the track, make sure the smaller point is facing outwards, so you can thread in the bolts when you need to. Just slide it in the track and you might have to pull it a little bit forward that they make contact with something in the background, but they slide pretty easily. So now we're gonna go ahead and replace our cap just so I don't lose it. Slides right back into place, and how we removed it, we're just pushing this tab and sliding this out right here. So I'll put it back. And then we have our three silver bases here that have the threaded holes. So those slide into the track and allow us to attach our tower. So we're gonna do some pre-setup here. With this piece is gonna go on each one of these, teeth on teeth. So you see, there and there. That way it gets a nice grip and then we're gonna drop the bolt through down, that way I can hold it with my thumb to get it lined up and then get it started. So I set a block there and just hand tighten it. We're gonna do the same thing for the other two. Just get them a hand tightened, no reason to over tighten them just yet. Just want to get everything in place, so it'll hold itself up. So before we started tightening them down, we're gonna go in and get some measurements, make sure they're in right spot. Of course you want to make sure they're even on both sides. And then you kind of want to measure out-- What we did was from the cab to the tower about 14 inches from there to here. Or in some space, that way our accessories, they hang over, don't come in contact with the glass. You definitely wanna leave a space for that. And then we'll come here from inside to inside of the towers, we've got about 20 and a half inches of space there. We're gonna measure that on both sides before we start tightening this down. Now, the reason we leave these hand tight, is so we can kind of move the tower a little easier around the track, so back and forth. Now it still does get jammed up a little bit, so you can just kind of shake it and that should loosen up whatever gets stuck to help you just move it back and forth. Got the Reconn-Deck bar right here. Gonna go ahead and use the key that comes with it. It's gonna unlock the end cap, we're gonna move that. Now I'm gonna flip it upside down so that we can slide these along the T-track track on the bottom. We'll get two on each side. That way it's gonna install to the towers you've already got on the tracks. You can keep it loose like that. We'll place our cover, and lock it back up with that key. So now, once that bar's set on the top of the towers, I already lined up the two bolts on the other side. So this I'm gonna do the same thing. So it's easy and nice that you can slide them around to meet those holes on the top. It goes up, let it fall through, look at the bottom. Looks good there. Hopping out of bed, I wanna make sure that the overhang was even on both sides. So we measured out it's four and seven eights on each side here, the same thing in the front. Now that we know it's even we started tying it down. Then come back and add the nuts here to the bottom side of our tower. So you can do that hand tight for both of those. Just to help us keep it in the same spot. And then. We use the included tool to tighten them all down until the specified writing in the instructions. So, this is the included tool that comes with. You got the add on here at the end, that's a socket. Just put that. Then this is gonna tell us when it's torqued out. So we're gonna start to tighten it down and this will bend out when you know it's torqued. To let you know the torque rate on this blue part. This will come out, so just make sure this matches with the one it says in the instructions. It is kind of a long tool, so it might make contact with your bed. So you have to do like, smaller turns, but it shouldn't take you that long. Now we're ready to install a locks for our bolts. So you're looking at this one, we're gonna put it here in the center. This is our piece right here, so we're gonna kinda tilt it back like this and make sure it's in the unlocked position, with this knob being up and down right there. So, you kinda tilt it down. You can see there's a little bit of a lip here. You match it up with the gap, push that up into place. Now it fits in there, so you can take the blue key, turn it and lock it in place, just like that. All right, we'll do the same thing up here, kinda fits up in there too. Just like we did before. And now with that locked into place, it's coming up to the bolts up here, and down here so that nobody can mess with those when you're not around. That about does it for the Reconn-Deck on our 2021 Toyota Tacoma. Thanks for hanging out..