XRS Cross Bars - Truck Bed Rail Kit for Mid-Sized Trucks without Tonneau Covers

Comments:
I purchased the XRS Bed Rail kit for my 22 Tacoma Off Road Short Bed. I had originally like the looks of some of the newer options from the big Y company, but those require specific adapters to work with trucks with bed rail systems and those adapters have been out of stock forever. When I ran across the XRS bed rails, I was excited for a similar option that appeared to contain all the mounting hardware I’d need. The product wasn’t in-stock from GoRhino, so I ordered from a different company.

Out of the box (or boxes..there are many!) everything was packed super well and looked great. One interesting note is that the kit comes with multiple mounting options to fit different vehicles. One of these includes a series of 4 flat plates. Luckily, I didn’t need these as two of these were bent significantly. (Which is amazing as the metal is thick.)

So onto the install and a couple of frustrations. First, the instructions show inserting a couple of carriage bolts into a mounting plate and sliding them into the bed track. This doesn’t work on my 22’ Tacoma for a couple of reasons. The rear wheel wells extend into the bed of the truck enough that the flat plate doesn’t have enough room to slide into the track. (This may not be a problem with the six foot bed, but was with the shorter 5 foot bed.) The second problem, which would be there with both bed lengths, is that there’s not enough depth in the track for the rounded end of the carriage bolt slide past the bolts that hold the rail to the vehicle. The only way to do this is to remove the tracks completely from the truck, install the mounting plate hardware (and anything else you want in the tracks), and then reinstall the track on the truck. This is the process that I followed. Once I opted to go this route, it went quickly, but it would’ve been nice had the instruction noted this.

The only other frustration I have at this point is how the cross bars connect to the towers. Each bar is connected via 3 screws (each with a flat washer, locking washer, and bolts.) You attach the bars to the towers off of the truck and then set everything in place onto the mounting hardware. The challenge is that you can really only hand-tighten the bolts until you have everything in place as you’ll need to move the bars to center them once you have them on the truck. At this point, good luck getting the middle screw tightened! The location pretty much prevents getting any wrench or socket in there. I put some blue Loctite on each one and got it as snug as possible.

Once installed, the rack looks pretty good. Be aware that the cross bars stick out farther than what the pictures indicate. On my Tacoma, I’ve got about 7 inches that stick out on either side. Not a big deal, but not as a clean of a look as I had hoped. The matte finish is nice and arrived in great shape. The welds are ok, but aren’t the prettiest. Time will tell how they hold up. (If you’re at all familiar with the strength training world, it reminds me of things I’ve had from Titan versus things I’ve purchased from Rogue.)

Overall, this seems like an ok rack. I’ll be putting a tent on top soon and will update on performance of the rack.

I also added the optional cross bar but will review that separately.