Bed racks on a budget

2- Water 2 gallon Rotopax will be mounted on passenger side on short brackets.
2- maxtrax will be mounted on driver side on longer brackets. Super happy with how everything came together. Taking my time was very beneficial in the end.

Still need to drill holes in the flat steel brackets that connect the top and bottom front to back bars so that I can mount all things mentioned above.

Will most likely brush on the primer to fill in any unwanted blemishes from welding and to give a quality base layer. Still deciding whether or not I'm going to be brushing on the finish coats.

In two years when I get my rooftop tent, I will be welding in top front to back bars for mounting purposes. At that point I will take it to a professional to be blasted, prepped and powder coated.
Until then, this whole build will cost me roughly $70 give or take. That number covers paint and stainless steel hardware.

These things sell for in upwards of $1200 shipped to Hawaii so I am beyond stoked to be coming out of this less than 100 bucks!

 

Will be going with gloss black, but when I go with the powder coating in a couple years I'm leaning towards color matching the MGM. We shall see in a couple years though. Haha

 

Will do for sure! Thanks for the support.

 

Prepped, holes drilled, and primed with a first coat!
I decided to paint on an epoxy based primer. It will be a great base coat that will harden and protect from any potential future rust. I will be letting it sit over night and then spraying on another primer, as well as the finish coats first thing tomorrow morning!

 

Cool man I did something similar a while back . I used 1/4 flat bar trimmed to size for the bed rail track and welded nuts on the back to secure. I made mine angled to mount a bat wing awning . I always debate if I should have bent it though to look better but it was free as well so meh .. nevermind I did by hardware .

 

I built one out of schedule 40... then had the whole rack Line X it’s been about 9 months holding up to the elements very well.

 

Very cool, man. Stoked that I'm not the only one to use that bolt near the tail gate! Looks awesome.

 

Nice! I think I'm going to steal that idea about a mounting surface for an awning!

 

Yeah there pretty awesome and this ez up couldn't hang in high winds

 

Looks awesome. You live windward side?

 

Awesome thread, I've wanted to make something to work around the factory style bed cover that flips up in three sections but this looks much more feasible with the roll up style cover.

Thanks for sharing.

 

Second stage of primer on welded joints and bare steel areas (without hot dipped galvanized treatment).

 

First stage of finish coat!

 

This is super sweet, maybe make another....because I agree shipping to Oahu is nuts.

 

I'm proud to say my rack is finally finished. Took about a month due to my busy schedule but I can't believe how good it turned out (in my opinion obviously).

Like I said from the beginning all material except paint and hardware was free. I spent $40 total on the entire project start to finish! It's not professionally made, or brand name, or perfectly painted/assembled, but it was 40 MF-ing bucks so I ain't upset. Haha. Thanks for all the support .....

Here it is!!

 

Awesome. Looks top notch, what was the estimated cost to produce that rack you think.

 

Do you mean like if I didn't get the materials for free?

 

Yea

 

That I'm not too sure. Probably not cheap. Buying pipe only a couple at a time gets expensive. Plus the welding would put you back a bit too if you can't weld.

 

Shoots I just wanted to see how much roughly the mark up is. But I bet it’s pretty close after factoring in labor.