ATO bed rack build

I wanted to share my bed rack with you all. Still a work in progress and I'd love some feedback about ideas for the future.

I picked up this ATO bed rack off of Facebook Marketplace for ~$150. It had all of the basic things I was looking for in a rack (round tubing, multiple mounting points, etc), but was a little beat up and rusty from years of hitting the trail.





I stripped all of the paint and rust scale off with a wire wheel, then welded on some bar stock for an easy mounting point later on.


Next, some self-etching bare metal primer and flat black paint. I used automotive rollbar and chassis paint from Advance Autoparts for this, which has been by far the smoothest laying paint I've worked with and provides great results!



I ran this setup for a number of weeks, but ultimately wanted more support on the bedsides and easier mounting for recovery gear later on. First bend:


Added a horizontal bar for mounting:


Opposite bed support added, CaliRaised corner lights added:


Complete!

 

Right on! I like it when people adapt off the shelf stuff and make it more useable for their specific use case. Good job