Crashnburn80's Roof Top Tent lighting upgrades and mounting recomendations

Below are my recommendations to improve the lighting for your RTT and optimize the mounting solutions for best performance, regardless of which specific RTT you choose.

Lighting
Most roof top tents come with a standard interior LED strip of 6000k+ light that is more suited for a Guantanamo bay interrogation room than a relaxing camping experience. Ultra high color temps and high intensity are not what you want for a relaxing environment, especially at night. Instead, swap the standard strip light with Tuff Stuff's amber/white dimmable LED tent light. The dimmable amber light will completely change the camping experience for the better, creating a far more pleasing environment. An additional pro, amber LED light also does not attract bugs. This is all plug and play and a simple upgrade with leads long enough to run to the trucks battery. Battery upgrade recommendations here. If you take nothing else away from this thread, order this tent light, it is so worth the low cost.

Tuff Stuff amber/white dimmable tent light


For additional light around the ladder, I cut some aluminum sheet and made mounts for some KC 'amber' (yellow) cyclones. I tested the Cyclones as the highest performing rock light in the rock light thread. Again going with warmer colors for better camping ambiance with less harm to night vision. I had these on a manual switch and then converted to a remote switch but have not yet finished the remote control project. More to come.

KC Cyclone 2" LED light



Unfortunately haven't taken any trail pics of the lights.


Tent Mounting
First thing is you must reinforce the bed. Tacoma beds are plastic, which is great with many advantages, but they are known to crack carrying heavy loads on the bed rails. So you need bed stiffeners to prevent bed failure. There are many to choose from on the market, but there is one that is clearly best.

Total Chaos Bed Stiffeners


These are great as they tie into the frame, run the full length of the bed side all the way to the top, they are designed to not interfere with carrying loads in the bed (unlike many) and they also offer excellent tie down points. I was initially worried that bed stiffeners would be a negative due to impacting bed loading ability, but these turned out to be a substantial positive with their additional tie down functionality without impacting bed ability. Note how the gusset aligns with the wheel well.



Bed Bars
Bed racks for RTTs seem to get all the attention, but you can run much lighter and less expensive bed bars to achieve better performance. A bed rack may weight 80+lbs and cost upwards of $800. Bed bars weigh on the order of ~20-22lbs for a pair and cost less than 1/3 the amount.

Rather than going full height with a rack, a mid-height bar can place the RTT at similar height of the trucks roof line, providing better aerodynamics to not incure the significant performance drag penalty of a full size rack, meaning less impact in vehicle driving dynamics and mpgs leaving your tent on between trips, and better performance on long distance trips. It also allows the tent to fit in most garages and is less puckering in severe off camber situations on the trail. I recommend Relentless Fab bars in tall 9", as they have very large feet to better distribute the load on the bed side. A tall bar allows you to still access coolers and gear storage under the bed, unlike short bars.

When using bed bars, it is best to discard your tents flat stock mount brackets and instead pick up some round exhaust clamps to match the bed bars diameter. For example, the Relentless bars use 1.75", so picking up some 1.75" exhaust clamps allows the mount to contour all the way around the bar for significantly superior grip instead of the small contact patch provided by the tents flat stock. Note 3 bars is not necessary, but that is all they seem to sell now.

Relentless Fab 9" Bed Bars




Running 2 bars.


I followed Relentless Fab's recommendation for DIY spray on bed liner for my bars finish. What was immediately evident is that loading/unloading/positioning the tent scrapped off the spray on bed liner down to primer or worse. I touched-up the bars several times only to repeat each load/unload. Eventually I wrapped the contact area in a couple wraps of black duct tape. This allowed sliding of the tent without stripping the finish and provided centering guidance points to mount the tent. I've now done several trips with no need to respray my bars.

@TOTAL CHAOS @RelentlessFabrication @RelentlessFab @Taylor@KC HiLiTES

 

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Good info. I like the lights; hadn't seen that before.

 

Almost stopped reading at the first sentence haha. My RTT has been everything BUT impractical.

 

LOL. For most they are not, but they are a lot of fun. I revised the opening line to be more specific on the thread.

 

Great write up! I have the same tent and still figuring out my setup. How are you going to orient the exhaust clamps? From what I see out there, they are essentially u-bolts, so would you tighten them?

 

They go on like this and have 2 straight bolts per clamp that go into the mounts on the tent track.