Relative newb to the overland scene here, sorry. I did some searching, but my list is awfully specific and nothing hit it all. Thanks for any/all solid advice, as I'm a bit pressed for time to get this solved.

Vehicle is a '15 crew cab short bed. I already have an OEM soft tonneau (rebranded Truxedo Truxport), which in a perfect world stays right where it is. My only goal at the moment is to be able to carry canoe / awning / recovery gear, but a soft topper is probably in the cards at some point. Looking for recs on rack and topper that are high-quality and play well together. Budget is whatever, value over bling please.

- Canoe will extend over the cab, so rack needs to be that high, ideally adjustable.
- Awning is likely the Darsche Eclipse v2 (other recs welcome, prefer self-supporting).
- Don't ever see an RTT, so if there's a lighter-duty (ie: cheaper) rack option, that's a plus.
- Any advantage to doing rack/topper together? Are there known-great product combos?
- Is it even possible to have tonneau/soft-top/rack concurrently? I know the latter 2 are possible. Guess I could lose the tonneau if the topper stayed on...are they water-tight when collapsed?

One more wrinkle. I bought the truck used, and it came with an Adarac AL Pro rack (this one). It's butt-ugly and I think I'd rather sell it off than use it. Looking at their website, they do offer an overland kit for it. Will it meet my needs, and if so, am I stupid to not save the cash and use it?

What else am I not considering?

 

Hopefully my response helps as I got a little bounced around reading.

yes, you can have a bed rack with a soft tonneau or a lot of tonneaus for that matter. If you want to keep the roll up you have you can look at elevate rails…they allow you to use a bed rack that fits in a t slot system. A few systems that will work with the elevate rails are the yakima outlander (I think), elevate rack, or the angry elephant rack.

lots of racks will mount with a tonnea, they make special brackets that fit with certain covers unlike the elevate rails.

I just had a few set ups. Had the elevate rails (not the rack) with a truxedo lo pro and yakima outpost (outpost won’t work as they won’t clear the cab but the other model yakima makes will). That set up worked, just didn’t fit all together like I wanted.

so I switched to a Retrax XR which has the t slot system and the Yakima outpost.

I have two pieces of advice:

1. Figure out what cover and rack and then do it all at once, buy once cry once.

2. There are a few F150 or F series overland groups on Facebook that I wish I had found before I started as it had a wealth of knowledge I didn’t know existed.

if you are interested in the elevate rails, let me know I have a set for sale I’d let go cheap, also have a lo pro for sale. Looking back, I probably should’ve kept the elevate rails, lo pro, but switch to the angry elephant or elevate rack as it would’ve been a cheaper option