After a few months of pondering how I wanted to do this and referring to the f150 forums, I finally finished my homemade bike rack. I wanted something I can easily take off so I can still use my truck flip tonneau cover. You can buy stuff like this off the shelf from Thule or Yakima, but man is it pricey. $1k give or take for rails and cross bars.

So here you go, I scored some scrap 1.5" square tubing, then maybe $50-$75 in stake pocket anchors and hardware.

I just have to undo the 4 hand knobs on the cross bars, then the whole cross/bike tray assembly lifts off and put in storage when not in use, which then gives me use of the tri flip cover again. The rails I'll keep on permanently.

A fraction of the cost of off the shelf stuff. Not sure how much 1.5" tubing is, but 4 pieces at roughly 6' can't be that much.

I have another few bike trays coming in the mail to finish it out, which will make the cross bar assembly even sturdier when I take it off.

Luckily my neighbor had a chop saw and drill press, that made much quicker work of what little cutting and drilling I had. I am NOT a fabricator, but I was able to manage this, not without mistakes of course.


The last thing I want to do is cut off about 2-3" of the bike tire tray in the rear so I can actually flip my first section of the cover up and it will stay while this is on. As it is, it goes to about a 80deg angle, so it just falls.

Looks good, well done.

Nice looking bike rack. I've been thinking about building one of these. What material did you use at the contact points on the down tube?

Why not put bike in truck bed??

JSKolache said:

---

Why not put bike in truck bed??

---

Handle bars.

JSKolache said:

---

Why not put bike in truck bed??

---

we take road trips and my bed is full of all of our crap!

Doing a week in Yellowstone in July and a week at table rock lake later in July.

And the single bike is just me getting it all lined up and installed, we have 2 boys, so 4 bikes.

HuntingGMan said:

---

Nice looking bike rack. I've been thinking about building one of these. What material did you use at the contact points on the down tube?

---

Not sure exactly what you are referring to, but on the rails, I have 2" 'risers' if you will, same 1.5" tubing material. Then the black metal plate on the bed rail came with the stake anchors.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000LQJF7W?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

I painted them black.

Ah, I see from your Amazon link now. I thought you had built the Swagman upright roof mount bike rack as a part of the support rack. I was curious what material let the bike rack grip the frame of the bike without scratching it.

Good looking work. Like the simplicity is using square tubing.

Do you have any more detailed pics of how the rails attach to the stake pockets?

Thx SW'86

Strongwind86 said:

---

Good looking work. Like the simplicity is using square tubing.

Do you have any more detailed pics of how the rails attach to the stake pockets?

Thx SW'86

---

I used these anchors, but only for the metal plate (which I sprayed black)



then found these at lowes for $4 a pair, I used the 3/8" x 6" version.



So the bolt goes through a washer, then the bed rail, then the 2" riser I made out of the same square tubing, then the silver plate from the anchor assembly (and a thin rubber gasket it has also), then thread on the toggle anchor. Just thread it barely on at first, then you push down the toggle anchor into the stake pockets and make sure it flattens out again (with flat sides up).

Then pull up on the whole thing so the anchor grabs onto the bottom side of the stake opening, and start to spin the bolt. It will thread that anchor tighter and tighter, eventually grabbing the metal of the truck. Crank it down tight and it's pretty rock solid. Then you put on the crossbars and it doesn't budget one bit.



Having said all that, after I had it all done, I realized I could have just used the larger rubber spacers seen on the anchors above for the 'risers'. It would have been less cumbersome installing it all, as the rubber spacers have a tighter hole that doesn't just fall off the bolt. My risers are hollow of course, so it wasn't the easiest thing holding all that together. If I could weld, I would tack the risers onto the rails. Doing it once is fine.. but during the course of making this and test fitting, I connected and disconnected those stake pocket anchors probably 6-8 times. I lost the toggle anchor a few times in the stake pocket too, luckily i have a long 8" bit with magnetic end, I was able to fish it out of the hole.