The super slow build thread of my 2021 LC HE (2 Viewers)

[Tex68w]

September 2021 - 5000 miles

Haven't updated in awhile, but back in September I put a DDI exhaust on to give the 3UR a little rumble. I opted for the 14x5 setup which is fairly mild and not loud at all. Now that I've been driving it for a couple months I can confidently say that there is just a bit of drone between 1500-2250, however, right after I installed it I did a ~2500 mile road trip out to Colorado and back and it was not pronounced enough that it was annoying or gave me a desire to take it off. The sound is a slight low rumble that you can hear on startup and acceleration. The sound at WOT is wonderful and I'm very happy with this setup. I will be looking to get the DDI resonator delete shortly as well since the plan for 2022/2023 includes a Slee rear bumper.

Audio best experienced with either external computer speakers or headphones. Phone audio doesn't really give an accurate representation of the deep rumble.





November 2021 - 8700 miles

Before the end of the month I placed an order with BudBuilt; next up on the list was always armor so I wanted to get in before the price increase on Dec 1. Sometime in late Jan/early Feb I should be receiving a nice care package including my sliders with kickouts and full aluminum skids (with the exception of the rear shock guards in stainless). I don't do any crazy rock crawling and really wanted to keep weight down while providing a bit of "oopsie" insurance which is why I opted for aluminum. Sliders will be finished in their textured black and all of the underbody armor will be raw.


December 2021 - 9100 miles

Suspension was ordered back in mid-June through Filthy; I was assigned to a stocking batch order they had placed in early February. We are now 10 months since the order was placed with King and almost 6 months to the day after I placed my personal order. I spoke with Ben at length about finding the perfect setup for my wants and needs and he was very adamant not to do a uniball UCA on a daily driver. Despite my original plan of doing the Camburg Kinetik UCAs he eventually swayed me into going with the boring but proven SPCs. The day before I dropped it off I ended up finding a local seller who had a brand new ARB diff breather kit for basically free. I grabbed it and had them throw it on the rear diff while they had it my vehicle in for the suspension. They did a very clean install electing to use nutserts for the manifold rather than the provided self tapping screws--I can't say it's something I would have thought to do myself and am very happy with the result.

After install I've now found two new issues that I'll need to correct. The first is that I have a very, very slight rub on the fender liners at full lock. I will need to heat gun and massage the rear of the liner and either remove or heat gun the front small flap. More importantly I've discovered that I am now too tall to fit in my garage with the setup as I have it. The mounting crossbars for my GFC RTT that I leave permanently on my Front Runner rack make contact with a wood trim piece around my garage door opening. After removing the crossbars I am just short enough that I can clear the wood, but do contact the rubber trim right below it. I'm sure once the rear settles it will be less of an issue, but there is no guarantee that once I eventually put a rear bumper and LRA tank in the future that the stiffer coils I'll have to run won't make it slightly higher again.

I have absolutely loved my Front Runner rack and all of the accessories, but I believe it will need to shift to something more low profile. I have been exploring a couple options and right now my top two are a Gamiviti tower setup and directly bolt my GFC bars to those. The other is the Eezi-Awn K9 load bar setup which would also allow me to mount my GFC bars straight onto the Eezi-Awn towers, but once the tracks are mounted in the gutter channels I could remove the towers entirely and run a smooth top. I'm slightly leaning toward this setup right now as the majority of my driving would be without the rack and I'd love to get a couple MPGs back.


Setup is:

-King 2.5 w/ adjusters (valved by Filthy)
-Dobinsons C59-559V Rear Coils
-SPC UCAs
-Dobinsons Adjustable Rear Panhard Bar
-Slee/Spidertrax 1.25" Wheel Spacers
-275/70R18 Ridge Grapplers


Before:

After:

Which shop did the install?

 

[HSTexan]

Which shop did the install?

Tandem Offroad in Haltom City; they had worked on my 4Runner previously and have always been great to me and done fantastic work. I went back and forth about doing it myself, but I really didn't want to mess with the UCAs

 

[HSTexan]

April has been absolutely nuts with tons of parts coming in that have been on order for awhile; some small stuff not pictured also include SDHQ billet ABS guards, Gamiviti dash accessory mount, and a Desert Does It front multi mount panel that attaches to the front seat bolts

April 2022 - 11,900 miles

Bud Built underbody armor is on; full skids and sliders. For the skids I opted for their 1/4" aluminum on the front, engine, transmission, transfer case, and gas tank and 3/16" stainless steel on the rear shock guards. Since I don't do a ton of crazy rock crawling and just wanted some "oopsie" protection I wanted to keep the weight as low as possible and didn't want to need to pay attention to touching up any strikes to prevent rust. Install on the skids took just under 2 hours with the help of a friend; we would have been done sooner, but if you've done Bud Built skids you know there is the one bolt connecting the fuel tank heat shield to the transfer case skid that is an absolute PITA. We ended up dropping the transfer case skid quite a bit to more easily reach in and start the bolt.

The sliders I opted for angled kickout with dimple die up top plates. I wanted to be able to use them as a step still, but do not like diamond plate. I've always liked the aesthetic of angled sliders and kickouts so that was the primary driving force, though I do appreciate the extra clearance and protection. Driver's slider took about 2 hours since we had to fiddle with the KDSS lines and passenger took about 1.5hrs.

April 2022 - 12,300 miles

I had put a Kaon roof shelf with large molle panels order shortly before I had left town--I was up visiting a friend who helped me on the Bud Built armor and while I was up there we went to Moore Expo. I had a chance to talk to the Long Range America team who let me know they were US vendors for Kaon now, of course right after I paid $250 for shipping from Australia. Oh well, what can you do; Kaon did end up refunding me a bit of excess shipping which was a nice surprise. I had posted in the Kaon thread that I wasn't thrilled with the idea of self tapping screws for the side molle panel rear lower bracket. If I was already drilling my panel to access the threaded hole why not drill a few more and put in some rivnuts? It ended up giving me a super solid mounting solution and upon the recommendation of a Mudder I ordered some plastic specific rivnuts from McMaster-Carr. Very happy with the outcome and this will primarily serve to hold my pillow sleeping bag while using my sleeper platform.

April 2022 - 12,700 miles

I had put an Air Down Gear Up SS1 Sleeper Premier Package on order back in January; my decision to have them bedliner coat it for me caused some unexpected delays, but I cannot thank @Kyle Bell and @suprarx7nut for sticking it out and getting it to me before I head off on some adventures. This upcoming weekend is Toyota Jamboree in east Texas, then I'm traveling for a vacation in early May before turning around a couple days after we get back to head off to South Dakota and Wyoming for some turkey hunting. I had let them know if I didn't get it by late April I probably wouldn't have a chance to put it in before the traveling started and they made it happen for me.

I opted for the ADGU system primarily for it's modularity, relatively minimal weight, ease of uninstall (so I can swap in my 3rd row when needed), and 100% full extension drawers. I did install solo asking my wife to come out temporarily to help me lift the assembled platform and sleeper onto the tailgate; total time was about 6.5hrs. Install wasn't overly complicated, though I did have a couple brain farts and installed two of the four slides on facing the rear before realizing my mistake and fixing it. You would think I would have learned from it, but sure enough I did the same thing with one of the cargo dividers otherwise I could have been done in under 6. I also spent a bit of time fiddling with the fitment of my Canvasback liner to make sure all the holes lined up so I could leave it on underneath the drawers. The mounting system seems absolutely rock solid and my initial impressions are very excited. It will get a small test this weekend and the big test in mid-May. This is my first vehicle with a drawer system and I'm super excited to have some better organization.

 

[suprarx7nut]

April has been absolutely nuts with tons of parts coming in that have been on order for awhile; some small stuff not pictured also include SDHQ billet ABS guards, Gamiviti dash accessory mount, and a Desert Does It front multi mount panel that attaches to the front seat bolts

April 2022 - 11,900 miles

Bud Built underbody armor is on; full skids and sliders. For the skids I opted for their 1/4" aluminum on the front, engine, transmission, transfer case, and gas tank and 3/16" stainless steel on the rear shock guards. Since I don't do a ton of crazy rock crawling and just wanted some "oopsie" protection I wanted to keep the weight as low as possible and didn't want to need to pay attention to touching up any strikes to prevent rust. Install on the skids took just under 2 hours with the help of a friend; we would have been done sooner, but if you've done Bud Built skids you know there is the one bolt connecting the fuel tank heat shield to the transfer case skid that is an absolute PITA. We ended up dropping the transfer case skid quite a bit to more easily reach in and start the bolt.

The sliders I opted for angled kickout with dimple die up top plates. I wanted to be able to use them as a step still, but do not like diamond plate. I've always liked the aesthetic of angled sliders and kickouts so that was the primary driving force, though I do appreciate the extra clearance and protection. Driver's slider took about 2 hours since we had to fiddle with the KDSS lines and passenger took about 1.5hrs.

April 2022 - 12,300 miles

I had put a Kaon roof shelf with large molle panels order shortly before I had left town--I was up visiting a friend who helped me on the Bud Built armor and while I was up there we went to Moore Expo. I had a chance to talk to the Long Range America team who let me know they were US vendors for Kaon now, of course right after I paid $250 for shipping from Australia. Oh well, what can you do; Kaon did end up refunding me a bit of excess shipping which was a nice surprise. I had posted in the Kaon thread that I wasn't thrilled with the idea of self tapping screws for the side molle panel rear lower bracket. If I was already drilling my panel to access the threaded hole why not drill a few more and put in some rivnuts? It ended up giving me a super solid mounting solution and upon the recommendation of a Mudder I ordered some plastic specific rivnuts from McMaster-Carr. Very happy with the outcome and this will primarily serve to hold my pillow sleeping bag while using my sleeper platform.

April 2022 - 12,700 miles

I had put an Air Down Gear Up SS1 Sleeper Premier Package on order back in January; my decision to have them bedliner coat it for me caused some unexpected delays, but I cannot thank @Kyle Bell and @suprarx7nut for sticking it out and getting it to me before I head off on some adventures. This upcoming weekend is Toyota Jamboree in east Texas, then I'm traveling for a vacation in early May before turning around a couple days after we get back to head off to South Dakota and Wyoming for some turkey hunting. I had let them know if I didn't get it by late April I probably wouldn't have a chance to put it in before the traveling started and they made it happen for me.

I opted for the ADGU system primarily for it's modularity, relatively minimal weight, ease of uninstall (so I can swap in my 3rd row when needed), and 100% full extension drawers. I did install solo asking my wife to come out temporarily to help me lift the assembled platform and sleeper onto the tailgate; total time was about 6.5hrs. Install wasn't overly complicated, though I did have a couple brain farts and installed two of the four slides on facing the rear before realizing my mistake and fixing it. You would think I would have learned from it, but sure enough I did the same thing with one of the cargo dividers otherwise I could have been done in under 6. I also spent a bit of time fiddling with the fitment of my Canvasback liner to make sure all the holes lined up so I could leave it on underneath the drawers. The mounting system seems absolutely rock solid and my initial impressions are very excited. It will get a small test this weekend and the big test in mid-May. This is my first vehicle with a drawer system and I'm super excited to have some better organization.

Great looking system in a great looking 200. Nice work and thanks for the kind words.

That Canvasback liner looks perfect. We get a lot of customers asking about mats and such. That's by far the best looking solution I've seen. That might need to be a stocked item in our shop.

 

[sreyes1103]

April has been absolutely nuts with tons of parts coming in that have been on order for awhile; some small stuff not pictured also include SDHQ billet ABS guards, Gamiviti dash accessory mount, and a Desert Does It front multi mount panel that attaches to the front seat bolts

April 2022 - 11,900 miles

Bud Built underbody armor is on; full skids and sliders. For the skids I opted for their 1/4" aluminum on the front, engine, transmission, transfer case, and gas tank and 3/16" stainless steel on the rear shock guards. Since I don't do a ton of crazy rock crawling and just wanted some "oopsie" protection I wanted to keep the weight as low as possible and didn't want to need to pay attention to touching up any strikes to prevent rust. Install on the skids took just under 2 hours with the help of a friend; we would have been done sooner, but if you've done Bud Built skids you know there is the one bolt connecting the fuel tank heat shield to the transfer case skid that is an absolute PITA. We ended up dropping the transfer case skid quite a bit to more easily reach in and start the bolt.

The sliders I opted for angled kickout with dimple die up top plates. I wanted to be able to use them as a step still, but do not like diamond plate. I've always liked the aesthetic of angled sliders and kickouts so that was the primary driving force, though I do appreciate the extra clearance and protection. Driver's slider took about 2 hours since we had to fiddle with the KDSS lines and passenger took about 1.5hrs.

April 2022 - 12,300 miles

I had put a Kaon roof shelf with large molle panels order shortly before I had left town--I was up visiting a friend who helped me on the Bud Built armor and while I was up there we went to Moore Expo. I had a chance to talk to the Long Range America team who let me know they were US vendors for Kaon now, of course right after I paid $250 for shipping from Australia. Oh well, what can you do; Kaon did end up refunding me a bit of excess shipping which was a nice surprise. I had posted in the Kaon thread that I wasn't thrilled with the idea of self tapping screws for the side molle panel rear lower bracket. If I was already drilling my panel to access the threaded hole why not drill a few more and put in some rivnuts? It ended up giving me a super solid mounting solution and upon the recommendation of a Mudder I ordered some plastic specific rivnuts from McMaster-Carr. Very happy with the outcome and this will primarily serve to hold my pillow sleeping bag while using my sleeper platform.

April 2022 - 12,700 miles

I had put an Air Down Gear Up SS1 Sleeper Premier Package on order back in January; my decision to have them bedliner coat it for me caused some unexpected delays, but I cannot thank @Kyle Bell and @suprarx7nut for sticking it out and getting it to me before I head off on some adventures. This upcoming weekend is Toyota Jamboree in east Texas, then I'm traveling for a vacation in early May before turning around a couple days after we get back to head off to South Dakota and Wyoming for some turkey hunting. I had let them know if I didn't get it by late April I probably wouldn't have a chance to put it in before the traveling started and they made it happen for me.

I opted for the ADGU system primarily for it's modularity, relatively minimal weight, ease of uninstall (so I can swap in my 3rd row when needed), and 100% full extension drawers. I did install solo asking my wife to come out temporarily to help me lift the assembled platform and sleeper onto the tailgate; total time was about 6.5hrs. Install wasn't overly complicated, though I did have a couple brain farts and installed two of the four slides on facing the rear before realizing my mistake and fixing it. You would think I would have learned from it, but sure enough I did the same thing with one of the cargo dividers otherwise I could have been done in under 6. I also spent a bit of time fiddling with the fitment of my Canvasback liner to make sure all the holes lined up so I could leave it on underneath the drawers. The mounting system seems absolutely rock solid and my initial impressions are very excited. It will get a small test this weekend and the big test in mid-May. This is my first vehicle with a drawer system and I'm super excited to have some better organization.

what seat / trunk covers are you using?

 

[HSTexan]

what seat / trunk covers are you using?

Canvasback Cargo Liners

 

[sreyes1103]

Canvasback Cargo Liners

I just saw the first page haha thank you!

 

[CharlieS]

Looks like you're missing a fastener in the beauty panel:

 

[HSTexan]

Looks like you're missing a fastener in the beauty panel:
View attachment 3001129

Good eye; the last of my nyloc nuts in the bag was too large--I took that photo right after install, but ran to the hardware store the next morning to get the proper sized one

 

[sreyes1103]

How do you you like the Bud Built skids?

 

[John Guedry]

September 2021 - 5000 miles

Haven't updated in awhile, but back in September I put a DDI exhaust on to give the 3UR a little rumble. I opted for the 14x5 setup which is fairly mild and not loud at all. Now that I've been driving it for a couple months I can confidently say that there is just a bit of drone between 1500-2250, however, right after I installed it I did a ~2500 mile road trip out to Colorado and back and it was not pronounced enough that it was annoying or gave me a desire to take it off. The sound is a slight low rumble that you can hear on startup and acceleration. The sound at WOT is wonderful and I'm very happy with this setup. I will be looking to get the DDI resonator delete shortly as well since the plan for 2022/2023 includes a Slee rear bumper.

Audio best experienced with either external computer speakers or headphones. Phone audio doesn't really give an accurate representation of the deep rumble.





November 2021 - 8700 miles

Before the end of the month I placed an order with BudBuilt; next up on the list was always armor so I wanted to get in before the price increase on Dec 1. Sometime in late Jan/early Feb I should be receiving a nice care package including my sliders with kickouts and full aluminum skids (with the exception of the rear shock guards in stainless). I don't do any crazy rock crawling and really wanted to keep weight down while providing a bit of "oopsie" insurance which is why I opted for aluminum. Sliders will be finished in their textured black and all of the underbody armor will be raw.


December 2021 - 9100 miles

Suspension was ordered back in mid-June through Filthy; I was assigned to a stocking batch order they had placed in early February. We are now 10 months since the order was placed with King and almost 6 months to the day after I placed my personal order. I spoke with Ben at length about finding the perfect setup for my wants and needs and he was very adamant not to do a uniball UCA on a daily driver. Despite my original plan of doing the Camburg Kinetik UCAs he eventually swayed me into going with the boring but proven SPCs. The day before I dropped it off I ended up finding a local seller who had a brand new ARB diff breather kit for basically free. I grabbed it and had them throw it on the rear diff while they had it my vehicle in for the suspension. They did a very clean install electing to use nutserts for the manifold rather than the provided self tapping screws--I can't say it's something I would have thought to do myself and am very happy with the result.

After install I've now found two new issues that I'll need to correct. The first is that I have a very, very slight rub on the fender liners at full lock. I will need to heat gun and massage the rear of the liner and either remove or heat gun the front small flap. More importantly I've discovered that I am now too tall to fit in my garage with the setup as I have it. The mounting crossbars for my GFC RTT that I leave permanently on my Front Runner rack make contact with a wood trim piece around my garage door opening. After removing the crossbars I am just short enough that I can clear the wood, but do contact the rubber trim right below it. I'm sure once the rear settles it will be less of an issue, but there is no guarantee that once I eventually put a rear bumper and LRA tank in the future that the stiffer coils I'll have to run won't make it slightly higher again.

I have absolutely loved my Front Runner rack and all of the accessories, but I believe it will need to shift to something more low profile. I have been exploring a couple options and right now my top two are a Gamiviti tower setup and directly bolt my GFC bars to those. The other is the Eezi-Awn K9 load bar setup which would also allow me to mount my GFC bars straight onto the Eezi-Awn towers, but once the tracks are mounted in the gutter channels I could remove the towers entirely and run a smooth top. I'm slightly leaning toward this setup right now as the majority of my driving would be without the rack and I'd love to get a couple MPGs back.


Setup is:

-King 2.5 w/ adjusters (valved by Filthy)
-Dobinsons C59-559V Rear Coils
-SPC UCAs
-Dobinsons Adjustable Rear Panhard Bar
-Slee/Spidertrax 1.25" Wheel Spacers
-275/70R18 Ridge Grapplers


Before:

After:

December 2021 - 9450 miles

The lift presented me with a new problem--I could barely fit into the garage. I had to completely remove my GFC RTT crossbars which had previously been living permanently on my rack. With the crossbars on I made contact with the wood trim around my garage door; with the crossbars off I still made contact with the rubber "flap" trim across the top of my garage door as well. I had already been contemplating another setup to get my RTT lower to the roofline. The Front Runner racks are tall enough as is and once you add a tent mount, mounting crossbars, and then the tent itself I was somewhere in the neighborhood of my cargo sitting 12-14" over my roofline.

I went back and forth on two setups, the Eezi-Awn K9 system and a "custom" Gamiviti system utilizing his towers and the GFC crossbars. In the end I decided on the K9 setup for a few reasons.

1. Once the rails are mounted I can run it without any mounting feet for a slick top look. Given this is 90% of my use, it will allow me to hopefully recover just a little MPG while also reducing day to day wind noise

2. The K9 system has a lot of accessories, similar to my Front Runner setup which was one of my favorite aspects

3. I can still utilize a "custom" setup where I mount my GFC crossbars straight to the K9 towers. Additionally, the towers come in a variety of heights so I can get the lowest possible profile.

Placed an order through Equipt1 for their 200 series load bar setup as well as some additional mounting feet to use with my GFC bars. The current height towers are really optimized for the rack tray, so I'll probably either swap out 6 of them or buy 6 additional dedicated feet of the 40mm low height to use strictly with my GFC crossbars. I've now gone from making contact with my garage opening to ~6" of clearance I'll miss my Front Runner rack and accessories, but I'm excited to try this out and can't wait to get the tent up there again to see how much lower it sits.

This swap completely changes the look as well--the Front Runner is big and bold and obvious, the K9 is subtle with a slightly retro vibe akin to a rackless 80 series.

Is the K9 on it on the bottom pic? How much sunroof does it cover?

 

[HSTexan]

How do you you like the Bud Built skids?

They've only been on for one month and in that month I've only taken one trip with them so there are definitely better qualified people to speak on them. That said, what originally drew me to the Bud Built skids was the design theory I read about on here. Rob (previously of Bud Built) posted a lot in regards to how they were designed and why and something about it just made a lot of sense to me. I kept reading too about how stout they were and the design has been perfected from going out and testing stuff and breaking it and fixing it and doing it over and over until they got it right; truly a field tested product. I did drop off a ledge straight onto a rock on the transfer case skid and it sounded pretty bad, but I crawled under and looked and you could barely tell. In my limited experience they are very confidence inspiring and while I don't intend to go out and try to beat them up, I'm no longer worried about hitting the underside

 

[HSTexan]

Is the K9 on it on the bottom pic? How much sunroof does it cover?

That very last picture only has the K9 roof rails mounted which are the channels that run the length of the roof (directly over that black trim/gutter). No rack or crossbars on that photo so there is no coverage of the sunroof at all.

 

[John Guedry]

That very last picture only has the K9 roof rails mounted which are the channels that run the length of the roof (directly over that black trim/gutter). No rack or crossbars on that photo so there is no coverage of the sunroof at all.

Any pictures fully installed? And from interior perspective looking out of the sunroof?

 

[sreyes1103]

They've only been on for one month and in that month I've only taken one trip with them so there are definitely better qualified people to speak on them. That said, what originally drew me to the Bud Built skids was the design theory I read about on here. Rob (previously of Bud Built) posted a lot in regards to how they were designed and why and something about it just made a lot of sense to me. I kept reading too about how stout they were and the design has been perfected from going out and testing stuff and breaking it and fixing it and doing it over and over until they got it right; truly a field tested product. I did drop off a ledge straight onto a rock on the transfer case skid and it sounded pretty bad, but I crawled under and looked and you could barely tell. In my limited experience they are very confidence inspiring and while I don't intend to go out and try to beat them up, I'm no longer worried about hitting the underside

That’s awesome, I was looking at the Slee ones but they don’t offer the other bits (fuel and control arm). Did you go with the Aluminum or steel?

 

[HSTexan]

Any pictures fully installed? And from interior perspective looking out of the sunroof?

I currently only use the rails with the K9 load bar setup; my use for a full rack is very limited so I have been running it slick top when I don't need to mount anything and putting crossbars up for my RTT. We've been talking to a contractor about making our garage doors taller so that I can pull in and out with cargo/RTT loaded on the roof. If that happens I will likely be able to install a hoist in the garage to assist in install/removal of the tent; if I do that I will probably buy a K9 rack tray to swap on if I need. That said the K9 is a fully welded tray so it is going to cover the sunroof. My previous Front Runner setup I removed one of the crossbars directly over the sunroof so that I had full use of it. I don't have any photos where it would be visible, but in all of the side profile shots I don't have the sunroof crossbar mounted.

Current K9 Load Bar Setup:

 

[HSTexan]

That’s awesome, I was looking at the Slee ones but they don’t offer the other bits (fuel and control arm). Did you go with the Aluminum or steel?

Weight was my secondary priority so I did full aluminum except for the rear shock armor in stainless since those only come in regular steel or stainless and I didn't want to have to touch up paint. If I end up damaging any of these beyond repair I will replace with stainless as I go, but for my style of driving I don't really expect that to happen

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Tired of bumping the thread as I just want to be able to track the progress of the vehicle

August 2022 - 19,500 miles

The full replacement Dissent front bumper is on and I'm stoked with how it came out. Reused my Baja Squadrons in the fog position (more like a low ditch light with the angle now though), added a pair of Lightforce HTX2's on the top, ComeUp Seal Gen 2 12.5rs for the winch, Factor 55 fairlead, and Agency6 billet shackle complete it. I originally thought I'd leave the bull bar off around town and only throw it on for trips, but after having it on for a few days and seeing it in person regularly I am really, really liking how it looks with it on so it will probably stay mounted permanently.

September 2022 - 20,000 miles

I'm now on roof rack setup number 3 and hoping this one will stick. First iteration was Front Runner which I still love, but is too tall and IMO looks goofy once I have my tent mounted. Second iteration was the Eezi Awn K9 load bars which I feel might have been an overcorrection of trying to go more minimal. I still love the way they look without the bars mounted and the slick roof, but discovered it would not be nearly as easy to line the load bars up with my tent mounts if I ever removed them so they ended up living on the roof and I never got the slick top back. I have been really wanting a platform style rack again and while I could go with the lower profile version of the Front Runner, my one issue with that rack is the raised lip of the sides not being flush with the crossbars.

The solution for me was the ARB Base rack--designed to fit as low profile as possible and a perfectly flush rack tray that comes fully welded together. I personally have had great luck with two Front Runner racks in terms of quality and feel like the fit and finish of the ARB is just as nice if not slightly better--especially when looking at the welds. Installation was the easiest of the three racks I've now done. Start to finish including removing the Eezi Awn setup was about 2h45m. It's a fairly straightforward process--flip the rack upside down, install the front wind fairing in the center of the rack which will get the mounting point for the side rails set for the front edge. Then get up on the roof and install four individual feet per side--this was very nice as it did not involve struggling to line anything up while the vulnerable mounting nuts are exposed. Once all 8 of the mounting feet are bolted in and torqued up measure the rear most feet across the roof and translate that measurement to the rear of the side rail on the tray. It should be pretty close if not dead on and it's a matter of tightening everything down.

Two days after I installed it I did an 800 mile road trip and despite it only being mounted for a week I've had considerable seat time with it. This is definitely the most quiet rack I've ever had on any vehicle and on top of that I can still use the sunroof in both the tilt and fully open position without it deflecting a ton of wind directly onto me. Huge fan of this so far with the only downside of that I now need to buy all new ARB specific mounting accessories for what I want.

 

[BIC JET]

GREAT LOOKING TRUCK BRYAN!

 

[BIC JET]

Hey buddy, what did you do with your old roof rack, the Front Runner? I may be a player. P.S. Don't forget you are always welcome to use my lift if you have anything underneath you need to work on.

 

[Tex68w]

I dig the ARB rack, it's at the top of my list. I am jealous of your Dissent full wrap bumper, when I inquired recently about the full replacement with the added bar work they told me they weren't offering that, just the base bumper. I am not sure what they said that but it's a bummer. Lastly, did you vinyl wrap or paint the trim?