How to Install the Kuat Ibex Customizable Overland Truck Bed Rack on a 2023 Chevrolet Silverado 1500

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Full transcript: https://www.etrailer.com/tv-install-k...
Hi, everyone. Aidan here at the etrailer. Today we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Kuat IBEX overlanding rack on our 2023 Chevrolet Silverado 1500. Now, there's a couple different varieties of the IBEX for the Silverado here. This is the short bed variety, but you can also get one for the medium bed. So no option for your eight foot beds but depending on whether you've got the short or medium, you can find the right IBEX for you.

Now the other thing to note is that we do have it in the short height configuration, which means from the bed rail to the top of the rack is just a little bit under 12 inches. But during the initial assembly, if you wanted to install some spacers on the very end and do the full height configuration, it would be a little under 21 inches tall. So that would put it a little bit more level with the roof of your cab and give you full use of your back window. In the state right now, it is going to partially block it and be a little bit more limited in terms of usable space in your bed. But if you do choose to use this to mount something like a tent, that's gonna be great because it gets that tent a little bit lower to the ground, so it's not adding so much height to the top of your vehicle and making it a little bit more easy to access for you.

Now, speaking of tents, that's just one of the many accessories that'll work with the IBEX here. You'll mount those to the top crossbars, which are expandable to get a perfect fit for your Silverado, but can also be slid front to back along the full length of this track here. You'll see how to do that in the install section later, but that's going to allow us to customize this to whatever accessories we may have, whether it be a tent, bike racks, baskets, boxes, anything like that that we might need to mount some things up to, and then we also have a lot of accessories that Kuat offers that are made directly for the IBEX. MOLLE panels for the sides, grab handles, an app adapter for their Kuat bike rack so you can have a bike off to the side, MOLLE panels on the other side, and then maybe a grab handle to help you get up into the bed if you need it, plus a lot of other accessories, again, that are designed directly for the IBEX here. So your options for rigging this out to your needs are really limitless.

Now with that, though, you do need to keep in mind the weight capacity. This can handle 600 pounds fully loaded, but that's on-road. If you plan on taking your vehicle off-road, where there's gonna be a lot more shock and vibration, then it's going to be limited to 300 pounds. So just make sure that depending on how you're using this, if you're really putting your vehicle through its paces, then don't overload the rack. The installation is a really simple clamp-on installation, just clamping to the underside of our bed rails and getting a really strong hold where there's no movement on here.

So it's a rock solid fit, and I think as far as aesthetics go, it's a really appealing fit on the Silverado. Everything sits within the bed rails really nicely, it doesn't extend too far to the back or the front, and you can tell Kuat did their research. This is sized perfectly for this length of bed. But my favorite thing is that install because it's no drill, it's really quick to do, and we can walk you through that process right now. Once you've got the IBEX all assembled, we can start with the process of showing you how it installs in your Silverado. When you do the first initial assembly, you wanna make sure you set this up in either the short or the mid-height configuration. We've opted for the short height, so we don't have that spacer piece in the middle here. What we need to do for our install, though, is loosen some bolts on the top of our crossbars. We're gonna go to these two and just loosen them up so that the crossbars can be expanded out to fit our truck bed. So this part's gonna be easiest with two people. We're gonna pull apart on the IBEX to get those crossbars expanded out just a little bit and then lift it onto the bed rails. So while it's up here, we can see we need to pull it apart quite a bit more until it can comfortably rest on those bed rails and we can clamp it in place. When you've got everything in place, making sure that this is even on the bed and fully expanded out so that we're making contact with the sides of our bed rails, we can get everything clamped in place. Be sure to check underneath your bed rails and see if there's anything that's gonna interfere with the clamps. It feels like there's a tab under