Gate King Adjustable Truck Bed Extender

Video Transcript for Gate King Adjustable Truck Bed Extender Installation - 2023 Toyota Tacoma

Hello neighbors, it's Brad here at etrailer and today, we're taking a look and installing the Gate King Tailgate Extender on a 2023 Toyota Tacoma. And this is gonna allow you to get your tailgate in multiple different spots and that way you can really get it custom fit to whatever you have in your bed. (tailgate clicking) And the great part is, is whenever you need to close it up, (tailgate clicking) it goes back to being a normal tailgate, so let's first take a look at why you might want one. If you haul an ATV or a dirt bike in your truck, sometimes you're gonna realize that maybe the truck bed isn't long enough to account for that, or if you're doing any household projects, you got a ladder or two by fours, whatever it may be, a lot of times you're gonna have that shooting up over the tailgate, which is totally fine, but if you have a camper shell or a tonneau cover, you can run into some issues there and that's where having a little bit of adjustability from the tailgate is gonna allow for that to drop down low enough to still be able to maintain that tonneau cover. We're gonna be putting a mid-height ladder rack on here and that really could be an issue with some taller or larger things, so having that tailgate to be able to drop down to really account for that is gonna be huge. And this, again, is super helpful with those dirt bikes and ATVs, obviously this wasn't a dirt bike, but similar concept where we are kind of hanging off to where we don't have a tailgate really holding anything in place, so this can act slightly like a wheel chock in a sense, 'cause as you raise this up, you're gonna at least have some back pressure against that rear tire to really keep it all nice and tight in place.

And having that adjustability means that it's gonna be exactly where you want it. These are made out of stainless steel and they have a powder coat finish, so they're gonna be nice and durable long term. They're gonna hold up to, you know, any road grime or anything that, you know, your truck will see. And you also have these latches where the pin engages, they're already pre-greased for you, so it's a little smoother operation. To get our Gate King installed on our Tacoma, it's super easy.

We're gonna grab a T40 Torx bit and we're just gonna remove one side at a time. So we'll go to where we have our cable attached and we'll just get this taken out. (wrench clicking) I suggest holding on to all your hardware from the factory, that way if you ever revert back to the normal cables, you'll have everything ready to go. So first we want to make sure that we have our Gate King in the proper position, so our handles should face up. You'll see the latch will also be here and then we'll have this metal tab facing out.

There's also a Gate King logo that should go right along parallel with that tailgate here. So what we'll do is we have these bushings and there's gonna be a taller and a shorter one. It's just the kind of the flat part of the collar there. And on the top, we're gonna be grabbing the larger one, so go ahead, grab that. We're also gonna grab our hex bolt and this is gonna feed back into that factory hole, so we'll put our spacer here.

And then we'll get this threaded in. This is gonna be a five millimeter Allen key to get this tightened down. Now our latch is kind of keeping this in place here, so we'll just take this handle, put it down into this clip that's gonna hold that in. That's gonna allow us to free open this, and then we'll take that shorter bracket, and then we'll get this bolted up into that factory tailgate hole. And if you need to, to get a little bit of leverage to get that threaded, you can just slightly lift the tailgate and this should kind of go in by hand, so just take your time and once you get it started, you can then take that five millimeter Allen key and get this tightened down. Just make sure that the arm does sit on that collar as we tighten that. (parts clanking) Now I just followed the instructions that they gave me to get this installed and kind of an issue I ran into is we do have this rivet, this is just a a tab here for our locking mechanism, and this wants to rub on the plastic of our tailgate, which I'm not really a huge fan of. So what I'm gonna do, I think to kind of account for that is swap these. We're gonna put the larger one down here and the smaller one up here. That way we're not scratching the plastic on our tailgate. Now, something that's not included in the kit and not really in the instructions, but something I'd recommend is you might want to put a little bit of thread lock on these bolts. A lot of times factory bolts will have it on here, but that way as you're going down the road, some of those rattles aren't gonna loosen this up. And that way, our clearances stay good on our Gate King. And so this time we're gonna put that larger bracket in place and see the difference, make sure we have that clearance. Speaking of clearance, something else we'll need to do is remove these two 10 millimeter bolts. So this is gonna be just a little bit sticking out too much to where it's gonna bottom that out, so before you close your tailgate, we'll get these taken out and we're gonna replace them with the new hardware. (power tool whirring) The new hardware is gonna be these flathead bolts that, you know, they're beveled, so that way it's gonna sit nice and tight in here. It's not gonna rub against it, I did put a little bit of thread lock on these. And to tighten them down, it's gonna be a four millimeter Allen key. So with those spacers inverted from the instructions, we can see we do have clearance here and that makes me feel a lot better. It may depend on the trim level that you have. If you don't have this plastic, I don't foresee it being an issue, but with ours, this seems to work out really well as far as this clearance sake. So from here, what we're gonna need to do is we can now get the other side installed. It's gonna be the exact same, so just make sure you have this clip on the inside here to where you can access it and we'll get that all in place. With both of them installed, something that we need to do is get our hose clamp around the passenger side portion here. And the reason being is tailgates, generally, when you're at a roughly 45 degree angle, you're able to remove the tailgate. So we want to make sure that that's not the case when we have ours pivoted in that position. So this will just clamp around, I'm gonna just loosen up this hose clamp until it's separated and then we can wrap it around and tighten it back down. And I recommend having this bolt in a spot where you can actually access it with hardware. And then with your hose clamp, just feed it into that bottom portion and start tightening it until it draws it in. With both of these installed, we got our hose clamp in place. We can go ahead and close this up. Make sure that your tabs are holding in the keeper there. (tailgate clicking) Everything should close, make sure that you don't have any clearance issues, ours is looking good here. And to operate this, it's pretty easy. You'll just lift this, it's gonna come out of that pin, we'll do that on both sides. And then as we raise this up, it's spring loaded, you should get a little resistance and then it'll start to clip in. And then from here, you can really adjust the angle exactly how you want. (tailgate clicking) Now don't be surprised, there is some play in here and part of that is so it doesn't bind up, it keeps it just as easy to open and close as factory. So if it is sliding around a little bit, don't be surprised. But this is really nice because we can get that angle and then if you ever need to reset it, to open up normally, all you have to do is raise it completely and this little metal keeper is gonna push that tab back into the clip holding that in place, so we'll just close this up and we should be able to just open this up normally. Now something that I will point out is these tabs over time can bend. So if this metal tab that locks our arm into place isn't holding it, you can just take a pair of needle nose pliers and tighten that up, the same goes for this keeper, if it's not pushing it all the way in and clipping it, you can adjust this a little bit just by slightly bending that out to where you can get that to latch. (tailgate clicking) Now if you do catch yourself in a situation where it's almost closed, kind of in this position, and it's not quite letting go or snapping back in place, they do include just this little tube here. And it's opened up, so where you can reach down and gain access to that to pry it out. So you just kind of slide that over and then that'll pop it out nice and easy. So now that they're installed, we can go back to the problem that we had, and now what we can do is lower our tailgate. We'll engage our locks here. And then we can adjust this as necessary, so if we had our tonneau cover here, this will allow us to at least get this in a good position where it's still gonna want to hold this ladder in place, yet we still have the clearance for our tonneau cover or our camper shell. (tailgate clicking) And we can really fine tune it exactly how we want because there's eight different settings as far as height goes. That was a look and installation of the Gate King Tailgate Extender on a 2023 Toyota Tacoma.