If your gonna fit a roof top tent to your truck - install it with a 'Tough touring' roof top tent rack' - My experience below on why this is the best choice for high performance offroad vehicles.
- Mark Sills
- Mar 25
- 2 min read
Installing your new roof top tent to your roof racks can be a major pain in the backside
- there are many reasons - no critiscism aimed at the racks themselves - mostly brands of roof rack are not suitable for roof top tent installs because they were never designed for roof top tents in the first place.
Problems encountered:
You can't get under a lot of 'platform' or basket style racks with your hands to bolt up your tents 'saddle clamps' and the saddle clamps bend over tome - get loose...rattles.... fail.
The rack planks themselves may have many points of contact with the roof tent fitting rails which can create a lot of rattles.
much of the platform rack is now covered and thus redundant...(and combined weight is heavy)
platform racks can be expensive and fetch decent orices second hand too - dont wreck ot with modifications
most common 4wd roof racks are made typically to 1225mm widths - this means they can be too narrow and may not pick up the required widths of the tents mounting points. worth checking.
Skme platform racks (rhino rack) run north south planks to minimise roof wind noise - they dont intersect with roof tents mounting rails ....
long story short - It can be done better / lighter / lower and cheaper...
Tough touring designed minimal 'Roof top tent ''Footrails' (or backbones if you want to call them that ) that are very different - They fold outwards to allow the racks planks (cross bars) to be bolted up from beside the vehicle.
this design also widens the rack .
With an 'outfolded roof rail' the bolts for the planks are outside the rack - so you can get to them easy.... This makes getting the tent on and off easy too. the racks are also built much lower/ stiffer / stronger to support the heavy loads corresponding with hard shell roof top tents
the list of supported vehicles is here - https://www.toughtouring.com.au/roof-top-tent-roof-racks
once your set with installing the tent -( theres a heap of videos on the page links above on how to install)
Your choice of roof rack and roof top tent dictates how you can then install an awning...
Ive brought this up too as the lot is incorporated and nexessary to plan together.... The Best / easiest awning install is to install the awning to the side of the tent (not the roof rack)
we call this a "awning to tent' install and this requires awning to tent brackets -
some are listed here
if you cant install an awning to your tent - we call this an "independent awning to tent installation"
There's a video example here of an install on a nissan patrol GQ -this type of onstall is a hard install (Plastic tent with independent awning ) It often invlves a lot of on the fly fabrication... You'll get the idea. Watch this here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LAcBvYaD3c
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Hope that all makes sense Took about 5 years practice and about 100 x roof top tent installs by me to learn what i know to get the kits we sell perfect.
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