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My goal
actually was to find two boxes. I wanted a black powder box
for our son's Tacoma and a like bright aluminum box for my truck.
We both wanted a low profile design meaning the top of lid barely
sits higher than the rear window. Crossover is a term meaning
the opposite ends of the box span the truck bed and rest on the
sides. This was important for a number of reasons. The
foremost is we wanted to retain the ability to place long objects
beneath the box.
I found that the Tacoma's bed design was not supported well by the
selection of boxes that local dealer's kept in stock although every
retailer was happy to place special orders. Online, Tacoma
owners pleading for help seem to get a lot of it, but with rarely
with definitive results. As soon as it sounded like someone
had found the prefect box to recommend to someone, they revealed
they could not recall the brand or where they purchased it.
Then,
if choosing the box was not a large enough task, determining how to
anchor it to the truck would become yet another challenge. The
Delta boxes we we found each came with two J-Hooks. We
installed our son's box first because I was awaiting delivery of my
headache rack. The Tacoma rail system has notches beneath them
for J-Hook applications. Since we wanted a solid installation,
we used the J-Hooks from my son's box and from mine to secure his.
We were surprised that Delta did not supply four hooks and I would
later discover that the installation of my box over the bars
provided on my Headache Rack would create even new challenges.
For
our son and me, the
Delta
Champion 32000 (bright) and 32002 (black) boxes worked out
almost perfectly for us. To actually be perfect, the
dimensions could have been a couple inches longer, but their next
size up low profile toolbox was designed for full size trucks and it
was much too long. The Double-T design means that I can still
reach the sides of my truck where Toyota has designed some in wall
pockets within the plastic bed liner.
To
install the toolbox on my truck, I had already donated my J-Hooks to
my son's installation. I either needed to find 4 J-Hooks for
my toolbox or another way to anchor the box and Headache Bar.
I had hopes to utilize the Toyota bed rail system, but the goofball
in the Parts Department of our local Toyota dealer had no better
advise for me than that "the brackets to mount a toolbox are always
supplied with the toolbox".
While visiting The Home Depot one evening, I found an inspiring
product called a
Grip Rite Tool Box Mounting system by Better Built. The
photos on the back of the package were dark and almost impossible to
make out. The price was hefty; a whopping $25 plus.
However they only had one set in stock and I knew I could return it
if I found it would not work for me.
When I
opened The Grip Rite and downloaded
more legible instructions for the product from the manufacturer's
Web Site, I found that the product could not be clamped on the
edge of my truck bed as described BUT, I could place my own washer
on the device (shown above) and slide the device along the bed rail
(shown below).
Once
on the rails and tightened, I placed the box over it and hammered a
long nail upward through the nearest hole to mark the first hole on
the bottom side of the tool box. With a template I made of the
second hole by rubbing paper with a pencil, I was able to determine
the placement for the second hole. Once the box was placed
back over the brackets, I found that the special bolts supplied with
the Grip Rite sunk into the brackets perfectly.
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