Trailer Rack No Weld Bracket System
Compact Camping Concepts’s Trailer Rack No Weld Brackets now allow folks with basic DIY skills and tools to build sturdy, long-lasting trailer racks. The brackets help you to make solid corner connections with no welding required. Made in the USA and offered exclusively by Compact Camping Concepts!
Tools necessary:
- Drill with 5/16” bit
- A 5/16” wrench and socket
- Square
- Way to cut tubing
There are three ways to buy the No Weld Trailer Rack Bracket System:
- Purchase a bracket set and source your 1.5” square tubing locally to keep cost down.
- Purchase a bracket set with precut 1.5” square tubing sections.
- Purchase a complete rack ready for painting and bolting together.
To build a trailer rack: what you are basically doing is creating two hoops and connecting them together. The hoops can be side-to-side in the front and rear, or front-to-back on each side. You connect the hoops together to increase the overall rigidity of your rack.
Hoops side-to-side in front and rear
Hoop front-to-back on each side
The primary bracket of the rack system is the corner bracket. With corner brackets, there are two types of joints.
Where a tubing section intersects another.
For applications where the racks will attach to a flat deck or pad, we have a base bracket. Rack uprights can also be bolted directly to the side of frames and trailer boxes.
Attached to side of a frame
Begin by determining the shape and size of your rack. I do this by sketching the planned rack. Then use the sketch to figure out the number of brackets needed and the tube lengths.
Once you receive your brackets; the first step is cutting your piece to size. This could be done with a hacksaw, but that would take some time. A better way to cut your tubing is using a 4.5” angle grinder with a cutoff wheel attached.
After you have your tubing cut to length, assemble the pieces on the floor the way they go together.
Then, one section at a time, position the brackets at the joint positions, square the joints up and mark the bracket holes.
Now you drill the bracket holes. If you have a drill press available to you, this makes keeping the holes straight through the other side easy. If not, it isn’t that hard to do with a hand drill and clearance drill as needed with the brackets if any of the holes are off-center. For quick assembly post painting, I make joint-to-joint reference notes on a piece of tape, then fold it into the tubing.
Drill Holes for Brackets
Trailer Rack No Weld Kit, Tube Marking
Then painting can be as simple as a quick scuff up with 220 sandpaper, a wipe down with something like xlyene to clean and a coat or two of enamel rattle can paint.
Finally, assemble everything with 5/16” x 2 1/4″ bolt, load up whatever you plan to load on your rack and get out for some fun.