Bed racks on a budget

In a perfect world I would drop $1k on a set of bed racks (plus shipping to Hawaii) for my truck. But my rent is more than some of your mortgages so that ain't happening. I have a RetraxPro pro MX bed cover so I'm fabricating brackets and rigid pipe to make a rack to work with my bed cover. Will show some updates and the finished product.
All materials used are free for me!

First step, cutting 1/4" angle iron to size.

 

Subd

 

The front brackets will utilize the in bed side rail system to bolt to. They front brackets will be up against the cabin near the canister for the bed cover when rolled up.
The rear brackets however will have one bolt in the bed rail system and I will try to use this factory bolt for the back portion of the rear bracket. I may need to get a longer bolt due to this one only being about an inch long.

 

Interesting. I’d love to see more.

I'm planning a DIY bed rail tire mount project. I want something low profile, so I'm thinking of starting with 2 of these, spaced about 18" apart:
http://sosoffroadconcepts.com/bed-bars/

And then running unistrut between the rails in 3 or 4 segments:

$64 Genuine UNISTRUT P1000T 1-5/8" 12 Gauge Metal Strut Channel, Slotted Back, Pre-Galvanized Zinc 5 Foot Length

https://www.amazon.com/Genuine-Unis...=UTF8&qid=1537472776&sr=8-4&keywords=unistrut

With a threaded bolt and nut to lock the wheel in place.

 

Brackets have been cut to size and are being grinded to both a weldable and paintable surface.

 

The way these are mounted is basically how I'm doing mine but with space to fit the bed cover.

 

Ground

 

Will be calling shops locally to see prices for powder coating. Still deciding if I'm going to match my trucks color or go with flat black.

 

Hand bent 1" rigid, not easy to do lol

 

Cut to height. These racks will be used as surf racks as well so I wanted them to be just a little higher than my roof line.

 

Interesting.. I dig the fact you are starting with free material. Any guesstimate on load limits of your project?

 

On 1" rigid conduit bent at the corners I'd say a safe guess would be at least 500 pound static rating. My brother has used 1 1/4" rigid conduit racks to haul a load and the leaf springs maxed out but the rack was still sitting perfectly.

Side note. I wouldn't put this type of hours/labor if the material wasn't free. Haha. Not worth it.

Edit. I will also be fabricating some bed stiffeners that will allow me to continue to use my bed extender. The bed extender has brackets that mount right where most bed stiffeners bolt up so I will make mine to fit around them. Will post pics of that later in the future

 

Used a hole saw on a drill press to cut my half moon notches so that the pipes mate up flush. These will be my front to back bars which I will be using to mount the maxtrax and rotopax to.

 

In

 

UPDATES.
Welded and mounted. Ready for paint!

 

Stoked

 

Not bad at all man

 

Sub’d

 

Nice work! Love seeing custom ideas come to life. Definitely get some pics up once it’s painted.

 

Badass. I love the DYI on this, what color you going with.