Build Showcase: Justin B McBride's Bronco Build Featuring TrailRax Parts

[Demon4x4]

Justin B McBride's Bronco Build​

As many of you may know, Justin B McBride is a youtuber in the Overland and camping world. He is a local to the Utah area near our HQ. When he got word that he was a Ford Bronco Ambassador, we were excited to work with him on his build. Not too long into his possession of the Bronco, we quickly noticed the OEM roof rack was not going to be capable of what both our team and Justin wanted for functionality and use offroad. Of course our original plan was just to make our signature Pak Rax for the Bronco and we tried to mount it off the OEM rack. We ran into a few issues at the time with this rack; 1. The Rack was not as capable as we would have liked, it did not take on the weight load we wanted and it had a lot of issues with the Pak Rax (mounting it to the plastic was not the greatest idea). 2. production and sourcing a roof rack for either 2 door or 4 door was impossible to get and we did not want to limit our pak rax to just customers who somehow could get the roof rack in their hands. This is where we scrapped the idea and started fresh. The Bronco Market needed something better and more usable which is where we asked our potential customers and audience a series of questions that ultimately lead to the design of our Bronco TrailRax Modular Roof Rack.

Once our Rack was born, Justin B McBride was one of the first to get the production models. One of the first things we put on the rack was the Go Fast Camper's Superlite V1. This Tent was a great size for the 2 door plus it was super light weight for those concerned about overloading the roof or the roof rack. He also added rotopax and waterport containers to the pak rax and would switch it up based on the adventure he was planning. He even used our Shovel and Axe mount when he was not in need of extra fluids. Justin uses our pak rax exactly how they were designed by switching them up based on what his adventure was about.

We also worked closely with Heretic Studios as they are a local lighting brand to us as well as all machined and assembled in house with a high priority on customer service. All of the attributes about their brand make it easy for us to always choose them for our lighting needs. We worked with them on mounting the light and making it the best fit possible. On the TRMR Rack, you will notice a Heretic Light bar fits perfect in the cut out and also sits below the cross members in the rack, this allows the user to load stuff on the roof without coming into contact with the light bar.

Justin had also later added the yakima awning to the rack. With the width of the tent, we had to off-set the tent to one side and mount the awning to the 90 degree bend we have incorporated into our rack.

Justin also runs our Trail Sight Accessory Mount (TSAM for short) for his antenna which is a great placement to keep an eye on your antenna which is great when off-roading in tons of brush.

If you have any questions about this build, be sure to let us know! If you would like to see more build showcases, be sure to let us know!

I’m curious how he had the water port mounted. I attached mine to a pax rack plate using the two slide together pieces (that would normally go on the water port hitch mount), but the shape of the water port while filled with water just seems to have too much leverage on the plate. My plate started bending on its first trip down a 4 mile paved road.

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[TrailRax]

I’m curious how he had the water port mounted. I attached mine to a pax rack plate using the two slide together pieces (that would normally go on the water port hitch mount), but the shape of the water port while filled with water just seems to have too much leverage on the plate. My plate started bending on its first trip down a 4 mile paved road.

Hey!

Depends on how you want to mount it, if you want more of a permanent solution, Justin resorted for a directly bolted on solution, so it does not use the mount from Water Port. Another solution we have seen is customers using that removable mount feature but adding an additional flat plate behind the Mounting plate or create an upside-down triangle with the bolts, if you do a right side up, all the weight and force from the water port leaning and vibrating will be put into a single bolt.

Feel free to PM us or email us at [email protected] and we can help guide you to make sure we get the best mounting solution for you.