Question: RRT that sits on roof rack, opens into bed. No bed rack design?

Anyone see someone run a design like this? A folded tent that fits on top of the cab, but when you open it to extend it, rather than opening off the side of the vehicle, it opens into the bed. You can have legs that extend out to help support the weight that could either sit at the floor of the bed, or clip into the stock rails.

I ride quads and want the flexibility to stand and load materials into the truck and don't want a bed rack. Bed racks aren't the sleekest looking, add a lot of weight, and a lot of compromises for my use case.

I haven't seen one like this, maybe you enthusiasts would know best. All the RRT's are too big to fit only on the roof of the double cab.

See my photoshopped image below.

 

Nothing out there like that don’t think u can even mount it properly. The engineers designed it to go a specific way to distribute weight .why not get a trailer for the quads .

 

Honestly I don't see why this wouldn't work so long as the ladder still had the proper angle and lockout to support the folding portion. Plenty of people mount their RTTs to roof racks (I mean it's literally in the name). Make sure you have the proper hardware to mount to your rack and then like I said before, ensure the ladder can still operate properly at the much shorter height than it was designed for. Those ladders do a bit for support when the tents are unfolded.

 

It exceeds the weight limit of your roof by about 10,000x and God forbid you ever get in an accident with it on.

 

An exaggeration I understand, but not a huge amount over what Toyota says with their dinky OEM crossbars. All depends on the number of bars and configuration. In Colorado there are plenty of people with them on the roof, I haven't heard of a single issue yet. Prinsu doesn't have a posted weight limit but SSO has a 570 lb static weight capacity, 300 lb while in motion for their roof rack. All depends on setup...

 

A slight exaggeration for sure. Personally wouldn't run one of these but if I did I'd want it anywhere other than the least stable place imaginable. A few bolts into some tin at the highest point in your vehicle seems sketchy.

 

IMO the biggest concern I would have would be wind drag and shitty MPG (plus it looks funny riding that tall ) definitely not the place I'd put mine but for OP's need, it's doable.

 

You could do this by changing the mount clamp configuration, just have to use a rack that is up to the weight of the RTT and deal with the mpg hit that will probably be a noticable amount more than behind the cab. Wind noise might suck, too.