Leitner Rack - Do you have bed stiffners

Anyone with Leitner forged rack here?

Do you have bed stiffners?

no engineer here but starting to think you don't need it b/c how the rack is designed. The rack has down tubes both sides connected to the bed bolts that can potentially work to prevent side rails to spread outward. Am I crazy?

 

Also not an engineer and have never seen these in person, but it does look like, as long as the rear crossbar is securely mounted on top, it could provide similar support. That said, I dislike how much leverage those down tubes could produce against the bed bolts, and am confused 1.) why they didn’t also tie in the down tubes at the level of the bed rail, and 2.) why in the world they made the tubes encroach so much into the bed space.

 

That rack also has no gusseting on the side corners to resist frontward momentum of an overhead load during emergency braking, which is the strongest force it will experience. (I personally would not put that rack on my truck.)

 

They are a pretty nice rack. They are made to hold a lot of weight. More than you’d want to put up there on any sort of constant basis. Pretty sure there may have been some “engineering” going on in the creation.

 

Points well taken. I asked this question b/c Leitner sells its own proprietary bed stiffners, but not sure if it's marketing to milk more $$$ or I really need one. They obviously said I need one, but as I said those downtubes look like they could provide some level of support bc they are essentially holding the bed together.

 

i'm not seeing that rack style available for the tacoma. if i search leitners site for 'tacoma', the only 2 forged racks that come up is this one, and a 'no drill' version, without the added support pieces.



on the page for their version of bed stiffeners, they do clearly show the rack mounts like the image you posted.



my preference on bed stiffeners is that it's better to have them. in my opinion, even if they offer zero structural advantage, they offer massive advantages for material tie down positions.

but that said, their version doesn't offer a lot of extra tie down positions, or do i feel it extends far enough into the bed to offer significant bend stiffening capabilities-- but it does appear to tie into the rack support arm that your pictured design uses, which does improve the load-carrying capabilities, but i don't like having a single bolt holding the whole thing together like that to bear the entire load of the design.

that leaves a question of which rack you'd be getting if ordering new. because if the image i posted above is the product you'll be receiving, most stiffeners aren't going to work without modification, but i would say would be needed even more because of where the supports tie in above the floor of the bed.

 

Well I am an engineer and work in the aftermarket off road industry. I have met the owner of leitner when I picked up my rack for my 2nd gen Tacoma and he is a smart guy for sure.

I have about 20k miles on my rack. 5k of those where hard off road miles though the Mojave desert and Moab fully loaded (water, extra gas, RTT, decked drawer system, tools, spare parts…) and no issues so far.

I am speculating here but if you consider the free body diagram of the loads on the structure and the load path, the vertical supports are required to ensure the load path goes to the frame via the bed bolts rather than the composit bed sides. The bed sides will flex…a lot. The rigid forged aluminum uprights do a good job of reducing this but fatigue must be considered with aluminum (repeated small flexing). To handle more cycles the stress on the aluminum must be reduced, hence the vertical supports. It all works as a system for sure.

the bed stiffeners I would say are not 100% required but will certainly extend the life of the bed.
You will need the leitner brand stiffeners because other brands interfere with the rack

 

Makes sense. I have Leitner ACS forged on my truck and have run about 3K miles on mile/moderate off-roading w/o an issue , but yeah, better safe than sorry.

Do you have Leitner stiffners installed on yours? EDIT: Oh I think you said earlier above you don't have one installed.