Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido,
and in this episode we're going to discuss our solution for how we're going to carry a
full-length touring kayak and tow a fifth wheel at the same time, so stay tuned!
So now while we were shopping around for our Durango fifth wheel,
it suddenly hit us: how are we going to transport the kayak with us when we travel?
As you know we enjoy kayaking in many destinations along our route; however, we've been carrying the
kayak on top of a roof rack that mounted to the top of the camper shell above the bed of
our truck. Of course, we lost the camper shell -- and therefore that position to carry the
kayak -- when we went to a fifth wheel because the fifth wheel hitch occupies the bed of the truck.
Now I could always scale down the kayak to an 8-foot recreational kayak that,
like many people, I could carry it vertically on the rear of the trailer. However I do prefer
the performance and the tracking ability of a full touring kayak, and ours ... my old
boat that I love ... is 14 and a half feet long, so that meant finding an alternative
way that we could transport that kayak around the country and tow our fifth wheel at the same time.
So here's what we've got in mind: we're planning on mounting a front hitch, a front receiver hitch to
the front of our Toyota Tundra, and on that front hitch we're going to mount a t-shaped ladder rack
that will extend vertically in front of the truck. So that way we can carry the kayak suspended
out above the hood of the truck, from our ladder T at the front bumper to our Yakima crossbars
mounted above the cab of the truck. Now, the devil's in the details. That's the plan.
I've got all the materials, we're going to see how this works out as we install this and test it.
Here's the bread and butter of what we're going to be mounting to the front of the truck.
We have a front receiver hitch from Curt, and we have a Darby Industries
Extend-A-Truck that will be mounting up on the front
in that receiver hitch. So the first thing we've got to do is install that receiver hitch.
Now assuming no frozen bolts, the receiver hitch installation looks pretty simple. It just bolts on
using the existing hardware where our tow hooks are located, so all i need to do is
back off the two bolts on that tow hook and the two bolts on the tow hook on the opposite side,
install the hitch, and replace the tow hooks and the bolts holding the tow hooks in place.
Barring any frozen bolts this really shouldn't be that bad.
So the biggest ratchet I've got is this half-inch torque wrench which is good to 250 foot-pounds.
Hopefully this will be enough to be able to break these bolts.
My scrawny little butt. Yes, okay, got that one started! And we're just going to loosen
these bolts that are holding on the tow hooks on the front of our Toyota Tundra.
Alright, we got both tow hooks removed without any issue whatsoever! So now it's
going to just be a matter of lifting that new hitch into place and bolting it in.
This would be substantially easier with two people.
So now we have a front hitch, a receiver hitch on the front of our truck!
That was actually really pretty easy. So our next step is going to be to get the tee out of the box,
the Extend-A-Truck, and get it in that receiver.
There we go, goes in the receiver.
Now just grab the pin, put the pin in there. I moved it in a little too far.
It's just like a rear receiver hitch that you're accustomed to
except it's on the front of the truck.
There we go. Put the pin through.
And there we go! And we've already got our first problem.
That T is a little short. I was expecting it to extend a little higher. This could be a problem...
So we're about to blow our bud get on this project. That's not going to work. The ladder rack tee,
it's more than a couple inches short, it's about five inches short, which is going to leave the
kayak pitched a little too far bow-down from horizontal to be able to work. So we've got to
find a longer ladder rack, which we did find ... we actually found here in town
in Salt Lake City. There's one made by Yakima which, when you add the optional extension,
is going to be just about perfect. The right length to be able to hold the kayak horizontally
on the roof. However, like I said we just blew our budget out of the water. We'll share the
cost when we get done with all this, but we're heading off to Rack and Road in Salt Lake City
to pick up a different ladder rack and drop the old one off to ship it back to Amazon.
Alright, we've got another budget buster on this project. The cost keeps going up. It turns out
that the LaunchTower components, which are the towers for our Yakima roof rack
that we used on the shell of our truck, do not have a fit clip solution for the naked
roof of our Tundra -- which means that instead of just buying different fit clips we have to
buy a whole new set of four towers. That's going to add over 200 bucks to this project,
but we're heading back now to Rack and Road, heading back yet again to make another purchase.
The next step to try out our kayak transport solution is to replace the old Yakima LaunchTowers
with the new Yakima BaseLine towers that we just picked up. About the only thing that we're able
to save are the old round Yakima crossbars which will save us over a hundred bucks,
but that also meant that we had to pay an additional $30
for adapters that will allow us to use the old round crossbars with the new BaseLine towers.
Now we're fitting the new Yakima rack to our roof. We've had to order the fit clips online,
the pair for the rear rack bar has already arrived but the pair for the front bar
may not get here in time for this video. We'll still be able to use
and test the rack with just one bar, but our transportation solution will
only be more stable when the front rack with its kayak hull saddles is added to the system.
Finally we're going to put our new Yakima LongArm load extender into the new front
receiver hitch to complete the setup. We've had to purchase the optional 28-inch height adapter
to bring the LongArm load extender up to the height necessary to keep our kayak level.
Here's the finished setup before we add the second crossbar between the Tundra's front doors.
The kayak sits well out of the way of the fifth wheel's front cap, exactly like we envisioned.
Let's take it for a test drive!
Our kayak mount has turned out to be very stable on the road,
and it will only be more so after the second Yakima crossbar is added.
This would also be an ideal method for transporting a canoe with a fifth wheel camper.
While we can imagine that the rack and straps within the field of view may bother some drivers,
I'm not finding it bothersome at all. So what's our final tally on cost? At first
we purchased the Curt front receiver hitch and the Darby Industries Extend-A-Truck from Amazon,
but then when it wasn't high enough we returned the Extend-A-Truck and replaced it with the
Yakima LongArm load extender and its height adapter. When our Yakima launch towers wouldn't
fit our roof line we replaced them with Yakima BaseLine towers, and needed round bar adapters
to adapt our existing crossbars to the new towers. So we've incurred a grand total $676.15
to bring our touring kayak along on our future Grand Adventures.
So I've got one more step to go. I'm going to add the front crossbar of the Yakima rails
across the front door jambs of the truck, with some kayak saddles mounted to the rails to add
some stability. I think that's really going to make this rock solid. Even so, even with just the
two points of contact that I have installed right now, this thing is riding pretty darned well.
This is going to be a great solution for us to travel with our fifth wheel in tow and the kayak
on the roof of the truck. Any questions, we would love to hear from you in the comment section down
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