As some of you know, Hi-Lift was one of our sponsors for the Pismo Jamboree. They gave us some great demo products to use and display. One of the items was their Adjustable Tube Mount for 1"-2" square or round tube. We had it displayed at the Jambo, but I'm not sure if anyone really looked at it since it was still in the package. Next year it will be displayed on a rig.







After looking at it, I realized that it would probably work on my thule bars on my 4runner. I decided that I should test it out and do a gear review on it. Install is pretty simple and took me less than 5 minutes (including trying to find the right size wrench). Depending on the size tube you plan on using it on, you use one of two provided ubolts, and all it takes is a 1/2" wrench or deep well socket (deep well socket with ratchet will make this really fast). I used the small ubolts and they fit perfect on the thule bars. Bonus for me was that my thule bars were already spaced perfect to match up with the holes in the jack.

(I'll take pics tomorrow, ran out of daylight today)

Next step was to put it to some real world testing. I put it to the test at Surf n Turf this past weekend. The thing was solid and held up to all the abuse I threw at it, bumps, jumps, vibrations, etc... Never loosened or rattled or anything. The thule bars held up to the abuse too which was cool. I'm sure yakima bars would hold up just as well, and I'll test these out on the yakima bars next time I have them on the tacoma. The only thing to be careful with yakima and thule bars is to not overtighten the ubolts as I believe you could probably keep cranking on them and crush the thinwalled bars if you weren't too careful. I don't think you will have this problem using these on regular tubing.

The only noise vibrations that I got were from the jack handle on the xtreme jack. The handle keeper that they sent us is really loose on the jack side and allows the handle to move and make noise where the handle attaches to the jack. I'm going to test out the hi lift handle keeper that I have as I believe mine is different and may be tighter on the jack. Otherwise, I used some zipties to hold the handle tighter which helped some. I'll take pics tomorrow that show where the handle keeper is too loose. I heard another option is to bolt two regular quickfist clamps back to back and use those as a handle keeper. I'll try that next if my handle keeper is still too loose.

Anyways, just wanted to let everyone know that this product worked really well and I was stoked that it works well with thule bars since I know many of us have aftermarket load bars on our rigs, but might not have tube bumpers. This gives us a solid mounting spot for our hi-lifts and is easily removable for when we don't need to haul our hi-lifts. I'll have pics up tomorrow of it on my rig.