Quick Fit Bracket: product test

AFTER every 4x4 excursion there comes a time when you need to remove the awning, fishing rod tube, recovery tracks and any other accessory fitted to your roof racks before the working week starts, but you can’t be bothered because it’ll take too long.

Enter The Quick Fit Bracket from Smart Touring Systems. With this clever kit added to each of your roof-mounted accessories, removal and installation only takes seconds. Yep, now you can whip your awning, recovery boards and any other accessory off in the blink of an eye.

To make this kit even better, all accessories can be easily and quickly re-installed onto roof racks. During our test of the Quick Fit Bracket we had three accessories removed from the 4x4 in about 20 seconds, and it took the same time to re-install them.

The only question is: Why hasn’t someone thought of this before? It’s such a simple, well-designed and manufactured system, it is ludicrous no-one has ‘been there and done that’. That’s exactly the position Adam from Smart Touring Systems found himself in.

He wanted a system that would allow efficient removal and installation of his roof rack-mounted accessories, so he set about making it for himself. Necessity is the mother of invention, eh?

Manufactured from laser-cut stainless steel, with zinc-coated 8.8 high-tensile hardware and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plates to resist rattling, the kit is fitted in two halves to both the roof rack and the accessory that is to be installed/removed.

This initial installation of brackets requires the use of a spanner, but the subsequent adding and removal of the accessories only requires the release of a locked pin from the system.

One kit comes with two Quick Fit Brackets and two roof rack brackets, to mount and remove one item (like an awning). Extra roof rack brackets can be purchased separately to allow an accessory to be mounted to other parts of a rack. And, to ensure thieving mongrels don’t help themselves to your gear, the system can be padlocked into place.

Keeping the gear secure and under cover at all times will prevent weathering, especially particular awnings that tend to fall apart after a while. Other benefits include reduced wind resistance, better fuel consumption, lower overall heights and weight savings.

Every roof rack should have a Quick Fit Bracket kit (or two or three) attached. I know mine will.

AVAILABLE FROM:
Facebook: @smarttouringsystems
RRP: $99 (including delivery)
WE SAY: Every roof rack should have them.