Eezi-Awn K9 Tundra Roof Rack Installation

Video Transcript

This is Paul with Equipt Expedition Outfitters and today we're going to take a look at putting a new roof rack system on the cab of our Gen 3 Toyota Tundra. This model here that we have is a double cab. The same system will work on Mega Crew Max cab as well. The trick of this one is that down under here, unlike the other trucks that we have in the Toyota line, there are no factory mounting points in here. So what we're going to do is create some mounting points, put down our mounting rail, and then put the rack on top of it. Let's see how it goes.

What we've done here is I have taken this piece of a pinch weld trim out and I've removed it from the channel right here. You can see that there aren't any mounting points in that roof line, none whatsoever. So I took that channel out, lifted it up out of the way, and I cleaned this whole channel out here back to this. You can see it's kind of dirty under there. Anyway, what we're gonna do is we are going to create mounting points and that's what this little guy here is for. If you look at this on the side, that's a top hat. What Eezi-Awn has done is they've put a rivet nut or a threaded rivet into that top hat and they have put on the bottom of here some high-grade 3M adhesive with a couple of holes in it. What we're going to do is strategically locate these guys right down into that channel there, drill some holes, and put the rivets into those holes there and tighten those in place. These are stainless rivets, incredibly strong rivets, and they're going to do a great job. Eezi-Awn has been using this style of mounting for some time now and it's worked out quite well.

To do that, what we've done is we've taken our mounting rail and we've put the top hats on the bottom of the mounting rail. You can see the bolt going down through there, holding those in place. They're in different locations down here. What we're going to do is take the adhesive backing off of these little plates here, take this rail, and set it down inside here with that adhesive in place, hold it down in place, and get those stuck where they're supposed to be down up and down this line. Then we'll take the threads out of this, back the threads out of the mounting rail, remove the mounting rail, and then drill our holes into the roof to attach more securely the locations of these mounting points.

The trick to the matter is if you look on our drill here, I've got a collar along there. It's a little crooked but it'll work. Our goal is to drill here but not too deep because we've got all sorts of fun things going on underneath there that we do not want to drill into: airbag systems, frame systems, lots of different things that we really don't want to penetrate too deep. Our goal here is only to drill a hole big enough for us to stick that rivet through and set it into place to keep this in line. That's why that collar is on there, to limit the depth of what we're drilling here. We're gonna go ahead and move forward through those steps.

I have that mounting rail now in position and I've got all of those bolts in place here, holding it down. One thing that I found while putting this all together is that sometimes the mounting rail sits up a little proud when you put it in there and they don't stick down. What I've done is I've loosened that bolt up a little bit and then I push down on that bolt while it's in position there to center it and keep that bolt as a centering point, forcing that little pad onto this interior floor of that pinch weld trim. Just by pushing this down, notice there's a space in between the bolt head and the bottom of the rail, but what I'm doing is forcing that piece to stick in place so that when I do loosen these up, those are now stuck in position where they need to be for us to drill the holes.