'Hacked' Thule TracRac SR for Maverick (with cantilever)

[MrMoustache]

I know this thread has been sitting a while, but I am very interested in more details on attaching the rails if you can provide.

Have a shot at one of these systems used for about half pirce. Having trouble getting my head around what you drilled and what plastic you trimmed on the Mav, and want to evaluate that before dropping the cash if possible. Thanks!

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[Wojty]

I know this thread has been sitting a while, but I am very interested in more details on attaching the rails if you can provide.

Have a shot at one of these systems used for about half pirce. Having trouble getting my head around what you drilled and what plastic you trimmed on the Mav, and want to evaluate that before dropping the cash if possible. Thanks!

I left alerts turned on figuring someone else would eventually be in the same shoes I was, looking for answers on a relatively untread topic.

I snapped some new photos this morning to hopefully help, as my 'word picture' may not be very clear.

The pre-drilled holes that come in the bed rails do not line up with the accessible/exposed 'lip' inside the truck bed. (I did peel back the wheel well liner and looked up in that gap, and it may be possible to drill into that space and with some clever method hold the nut up there, but that seemed like a lot more work than making a new hole in the aluminum.)

So I drilled a large enough hole through rail from the top to allow the head of the bolt to pass through, and then a smaller hole through the bottom of the rail. I then drilled corresponding holes through the plastic and then metal of the edge of the bed frame. Since I wanted a tonneau as well, I had installed that first to verify my alignment wouldn't interfere. Thule also warns to keep the rails perfectly parallel to allow for proper sliding.

Since I am using this to haul lengthy lumber and ladders, I wanted as much length on the rail as possible. This led to me cutting the plastic cover/transition pieces from the rear of the cab to the top rail of the bed to get an extra 2-3 inches. The back of the rail also runs flush to the lip of the tailgate, which gives it a bit of a 'winged' appearance at the rear since the bed tapers in. Functionally, it has been working perfectly, but one could shorten the rails if not as concerned with the length and it may look a bit tighter.

After that, it was as simple as bolting the rails through the new holes, assembling the rack, and sliding everything together.

Hope that helps, and if you need more specific info/measurements or have other questions, fire away!

 

[MrMoustache]

I left alerts turned on figuring someone else would eventually be in the same shoes I was, looking for answers on a relatively untread topic.

I snapped some new photos this morning to hopefully help, as my 'word picture' may not be very clear.

The pre-drilled holes that come in the bed rails do not line up with the accessible/exposed 'lip' inside the truck bed. (I did peel back the wheel well liner and looked up in that gap, and it may be possible to drill into that space and with some clever method hold the nut up there, but that seemed like a lot more work than making a new hole in the aluminum.)

So I drilled a large enough hole through rail from the top to allow the head of the bolt to pass through, and then a smaller hole through the bottom of the rail. I then drilled corresponding holes through the plastic and then metal of the edge of the bed frame. Since I wanted a tonneau as well, I had installed that first to verify my alignment wouldn't interfere. Thule also warns to keep the rails perfectly parallel to allow for proper sliding.

Since I am using this to haul lengthy lumber and ladders, I wanted as much length on the rail as possible. This led to me cutting the plastic cover/transition pieces from the rear of the cab to the top rail of the bed to get an extra 2-3 inches. The back of the rail also runs flush to the lip of the tailgate, which gives it a bit of a 'winged' appearance at the rear since the bed tapers in. Functionally, it has been working perfectly, but one could shorten the rails if not as concerned with the length and it may look a bit tighter.

After that, it was as simple as bolting the rails through the new holes, assembling the rack, and sliding everything together.

Hope that helps, and if you need more specific info/measurements or have other questions, fire away!

Thank you! That gives me a bit of a stomach ache, thinking about cutting into the plastic like that, and the impact of road salt, etc, but this is extremely helpful. I found a pre-Thule TracRac with rails and cantilever at $400, so I'm going to see if I have the nerve to go through with something similar. Looks like I only lose about 4 inches if I eschew that notch, so maybe I can justify drilling without notching. Good tip on keeping it parallel. I might try to use the crossbars for alignment...

 

[Wojty]

Thank you! That gives me a bit of a stomach ache, thinking about cutting into the plastic like that, and the impact of road salt, etc, but this is extremely helpful. I found a pre-Thule TracRac with rails and cantilever at $400, so I'm going to see if I have the nerve to go through with something similar. Looks like I only lose about 4 inches if I eschew that notch, so maybe I can justify drilling without notching. Good tip on keeping it parallel. I might try to use the crossbars for alignment...

I definitely took a deep breath before pulling the trigger on the multi-tool, especially since the truck was only two weeks old when I did! I was re-assured when I found the factory paint under there was in great shape, and there are good weep and drainage paths down and out. I had planned on sealing the gap with black polyurethane, but have been too lazy to do so.

$400 is a great price! I absolutely love the rack, with the biggest con being cost and then the work required to install. The versatility has paid off many times over, and I am considering getting another set of bars to have a low profile version I can swap out for road trips and camping.

If you go ahead with the install, keep checking your lines as you tighten things down. The crossbars have enough play in them that I ended up nearly 1/8 out on my first tightening down, but fortunately my drilled out bolt holes had enough play to correct. The shape of the rail and the plastic on the bed edges make it a little funky.

Good luck

 

[MrMoustache]

Thanks for the encouragement here and to all who contribute to this forum.

This past Saturday, I drove 4 hours round trip to Independence West Virginia to buy the old series TracRac with rails and the over-cab cantilever for $400.

I'm moving forward slowly with my install and I'm going to do my best to document my information here, because it's info I'd like to have had.

[As an aside, please, Ford, figure out stake pockets in a future refresh. There definitely seems to be room. They don't even have to be 2x4. ]

Step 1: I popped off the trim and took a rubbing of the hole pattern. I'll use this later on when I drill out the rails.

Initial Findings: two rows of rectangular holes roughly 1 1/16" x 3/8 (no calipers handy) and about 4 inches apart (~5 1/17 O.C.)

Tapers to a single row at the rear.

Inside row is easily accessed from under lip of bed. It's roughly 3/8" from the lip, so roughly 9/16 lip to center. The hole is centered in the channel under the lip, so a 1 1/8" brass plate tapped for 3/8" - 16 makes a perfect nut for these holes. Luckily, the TracRac came with 4 of those. They were used to compress rubber bumpers to hold the rail in stake pockets

Outside row is pretty much captive, with only about 9/16 depth. But I don't love using only the inner lip with this very wide rail, so I'll be exploring rivnuts or toggle bolts or something for these holes, as well as the rearmost center hole.

Leaning toward cutting the trim like Wojty did. Worst case, I'll be able to replace all the trim down the road if need be. Knowing it's easy to remove and replace helps.

Would be awesome if some after- market company offered trim that made the whole rear rail and the C pillar flat and (more or less) square, following the actual sheet metal. That swoop is a utility killer. Maybe it's aerodynamic, but I'd pay to replace it.

...To be continued

 

[MrMoustache]

So many lessons learned!

1. I didn't need a drilling template. The trim has one built-in, insofar as the tabs are centered on the slots and there's room for a 3/8 (used 10mm) hole directly behind or in front of each one. I didn't use the plastic to mark the outer holes in the rail, but I probably could have.

2. Brad point bits have very clean exit holes in this plastic.
3. The inner (accessible) holes are exactly parallel to each other across the bed. That means you only have to mark distance from the cab and do one setup on the drill press to get dead parallel rails.
3.1. The OUTER holes are NOT parallel and are blind. Very tricky to transfer for drilling
4. 1/4-20 rivnuts fit perfectly in those blind holes (the outer ones), but in the end I decided against using them. Feels sturdy enough as is.
5. The mounting kit that came with the tracrac included 1 1/8" x 2.5" brass plates tapped for 3/8-16 bolts. They fit PERFECTLY under the lip of the bed.

 

[MrMoustache]

Above is my utility knife work. I thought about heating the rail and using it to mark the areas to cut away around the top. Instead I pulled the blade out and traced very carefully.
This part takes a ton of patience. Don't cut hard or deep. Hold your knife hand in your other hand to prevent overcutting. You can see I lost focus once or five times there because it started raining and I wanted to rush it.

There's the final rail fitting. Once I get the racks on, I'll go back in pictures and see if I can step-by-step it.

So far, used 6 of 3/8-16 x 1.5" stainless hex cap screws and 6 of 3/8 x 2" double thick fender washers to shim under the rails. Used stainless lock nuts in the middle of the cab and those beefy brass plates at the front and back.
Painted the faded rails with rustoleum professional flat black.
Used a lot of tools, but I have a lot of tools.

Anybody know what kind of plastic this is on top of the bed rails?Doesn't quite seem like vinyl or abs. Hoping to find a permanent cement to mask these holes in a contrasting color of the same material.

 

[Wojty]

Lots of good additional info there, thanks for sharing.

Your trimming of the plastic is much neater than mine, looks sharp.

Didn't realize you are also in Pgh until now too! Will keep an eye out for another tracrac roaming around.

 

[MrMoustache]

Lots of good additional info there, thanks for sharing.

Your trimming of the plastic is much neater than mine, looks sharp.

Didn't realize you are also in Pgh until now too! Will keep an eye out for another tracrac roaming around.

Oh cool! I saw PA, but didn't realize you were around here. I'm in the South End of the East End.
I decided to use a utility knife instead of the oscillating tool, noting some complaints about how easily that trim gets scratched. It cuts great when you are patient and willing to take 4 cuts before you get through. Mapping exactly *where* to cut was challenging, and I think an even more careful job is possible, using wax pencils / lipstick/ whatever on the end of extrusion to transfer marks to the plastic and cut away the marks, but it would take hours. Helpful to have the offcut rail piece to trace.

Research points to the plastic being Polypropylene. Still working ID'ing a way of masking the holes with something that bonds to 'low-surface-energy' plastics.

Here's the rack during test fitting. I reversed the front and back pieces, because I think that big triangle is a better brace for the cantilever. Again, it's the 2010-ish model from before Thule bought it, and it's showing its age. Hopefully pretty it up with some rattle cans once the weather dries up.

 

[Leuf]

I'm in the process of installing a different model of Tracrac that doesn't have the rails. I've learned it's impossible to properly torque the clamps holding it without crushing the plastic which has a large void under it. With the rails you have spreading out the load I guess you're able to get away with it. However if you're putting holes in the plastic anyway, if it were me I would make those holes large enough to fit washers that you can stack up to fill the void so you'll have metal all the way through and no air gap maintained by flimsy plastic spacers. I'm planning to take the plastic covers off and make a spacer to fill it.

 

[MrMoustache]

I'm in the process of installing a different model of Tracrac that doesn't have the rails. I've learned it's impossible to properly torque the clamps holding it without crushing the plastic which has a large void under it. With the rails you have spreading out the load I guess you're able to get away with it. However if you're putting holes in the plastic anyway, if it were me I would make those holes large enough to fit washers that you can stack up to fill the void so you'll have metal all the way through and no air gap maintained by flimsy plastic spacers. I'm planning to take the plastic covers off and make a spacer to fill it.

Good thoughts.

Have to say I've got quite a lot of torque on these mounting points, but maybe that's because my bolt holes are fully inside the ribbing that stands it away from the body (just slightly away; it's bolted through the lower indentation in the trim). There's like 3 legs of a rectangle around each tab that holds the trim in, and my holes are right inside those rectangles. I imagine it's flattened out a bit, but no visible crushing so far, and no visible movement in the plastic even when I hang all 240 lbs of me off one side of the rear rail.

I believe I mentioned up above I have a 1/8 thick, 2 inch fender washer between the lower plastic and the track, as well. The polypropylene trim is basically a gasket/rubber bushing for the holes that have bolts in them.

The bolt-through mounting plus the extruded track makes it all a little more amenable to some shock absorption than a clamp would be (in full size trucks, they are held in by squished rubber blocks forced to expand inside the stake pockets), but I'm a little surprised you're seeing that much deformation on the lower part of the trim. Or does your rack overlap the upper bit as well?

Best,

 

[Leuf]

The bolt-through mounting plus the extruded track makes it all a little more amenable to some shock absorption than a clamp would be (in full size trucks, they are held in by squished rubber blocks forced to expand inside the stake pockets), but I'm a little surprised you're seeing that much deformation on the lower part of the trim. Or does your rack overlap the upper bit as well?

If you mean the raised part around the outside, I tried that with an extra strip of rubber on the lower section of the plastic, because there's about an extra half inch of the base that sticks into the truck bed if you don't. But I tried moving it further in as well without any real change. You'd know if you were crushing the plastic because the outer part that curves over the outside edge of the rail starts to pop up. I had snugged up the clamping bolts by hand and then cut the bolts so I had a little over a 1/4" of extra threads and the bolts bottomed out before it got tight. Then I stuck another 1/4" spacer in there and it still wouldn't tighten up at one end and I could see how badly the plastic was getting bent out of shape and hit the abort button.

I know from looking at pictures there is at least the head of one bolt that sticks up above the top of the metal bed rail, which must be why they designed it to have that gap under there. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more bolts sticking up near the cab so you might be sitting on those bolt heads at either end of your rail.

Winter is having a last hurrah here so I have to wait until Monday for a go at taking off the plastic.

 

[MrMoustache]

If you mean the raised part around the outside, I tried that with an extra strip of rubber on the lower section of the plastic, because there's about an extra half inch of the base that sticks into the truck bed if you don't. But I tried moving it further in as well without any real change. You'd know if you were crushing the plastic because the outer part that curves over the outside edge of the rail starts to pop up. I had snugged up the clamping bolts by hand and then cut the bolts so I had a little over a 1/4" of extra threads and the bolts bottomed out before it got tight. Then I stuck another 1/4" spacer in there and it still wouldn't tighten up at one end and I could see how badly the plastic was getting bent out of shape and hit the abort button.

I know from looking at pictures there is at least the head of one bolt that sticks up above the top of the metal bed rail, which must be why they designed it to have that gap under there. It wouldn't surprise me if there were more bolts sticking up near the cab so you might be sitting on those bolt heads at either end of your rail.

Winter is having a last hurrah here so I have to wait until Monday for a go at taking off the plastic.

That's strange. I have about 1/8" of steel washer above the lower strip of plastic only, and that levels the rail along the raised trim, but it's only bearing on the lower section trim at those washers. No obvious deformation of the extruded rail where those 2 bolt heads are, and can't fit a feeler gauge between any of the washers and the rail. I should check to see if there's an air gap at the bolt heads or not. I didn't mark their locations on the trim, but I think I still have that paper template.

In any case, I encourage you to take the trim off completely and look underneath. It's pretty easy, and should def help you figure out how to mount that rack. I still feel pretty good about bolt-through, if that's an option for you. Thule sells the 3/8-16 tapped metal plates as a replacement part for pretty cheap. Good Luck!

 

[Leuf]

That's strange. I have about 1/8" of steel washer above the lower strip of plastic only, and that levels the rail along the raised trim, but it's only bearing on the lower section trim at those washers. No obvious deformation of the extruded rail where those 2 bolt heads are, and can't fit a feeler gauge between any of the washers and the rail. I should check to see if there's an air gap at the bolt heads or not. I didn't mark their locations on the trim, but I think I still have that paper template.

In any case, I encourage you to take the trim off completely and look underneath. It's pretty easy, and should def help you figure out how to mount that rack. I still feel pretty good about bolt-through, if that's an option for you. Thule sells the 3/8-16 tapped metal plates as a replacement part for pretty cheap. Good Luck!

Yeah, I got the plastic trim off. There are three bolt heads along the length of the bed and I guarantee that is what is holding up your rail and not the plastic supports. I could see where they just folded in half where I clamped down mine. There's no bolt head near the cab so that's the only spot I'd be concerned about with your setup. But the way you cut into that vertical piece of trim there's probably enough solid plastic parts or another bolt under there that's enough.

I bought a 3/4"x3.5"x8' piece of PVC trim from the big box store. I planed that down to the 1/2" space of the upper outer side of the trim and cut the inner part down on the table saw to 3/8" so I have full support the whole length and width of the rail. I cut out all the plastic supports that were built in and just left the clips that I drilled holes for. Haven't put the rack back on yet as the weather isn't cooperating again but should be good as long as the PVC is strong enough. Fairly easy fix if you have the tools. Getting the trim off was the worst part.

 

[Leuf]

Got it installed!

This is the TracRac TracOne with 5.5" cut off the height and 10" cut off the crossbars. Height is set to match a roof rack that's not installed. Got it for about $300 open box off Amazon. The roof rack was $220. It flexes pretty bad so I am going to try to stiffen it up with some wood inside of it which is why it's not on the truck. Not sure if I'm going to leave the roof rack on all the time yet.

Here's a pic of how the plastic supports got crushed when I first installed it

And all of the plastic supports removed with a chisel

And my PVC filler

It did compress a little in the install but not too bad. If anyone does this, make sure you put something soft under the trim piece when you are removing the supports. The first one I did got scratched up pretty good.

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