Can You Dig It

So I bought a shovel…

Myself and some friends were discussing hitting some trails in 2021, and somehow it led to me ordering a shovel and some installation parts from Amazon that same day. It was random, but sometimes it just happens. Anyways, the shovel is a Bond Mini D-Handle Shovel, and the item description does say “Perfect for gardening, camping, off-road or beach use” – so there you go LOL:

After some quick brainstorming I decided I was going to mount the shovel onto my truck bed’s Utilitrack rail. Some even quicker research gave me the most popular method to mount things to the Nissan Utilitrack rails: the combination of Quick Fist rubber clamps,  3/8″ Spring Nuts, and some matching hardware (ignore the bag of molded knobs, I returned those):

Installation was very simple. First I drilled out the holes in the Quick Fist clamps just enough to fit a 3/8″ bolt snugly. I then used a standard fender washer on the outside of the Utilitrack rail and the spring nut on the inside of the rail to hold it all together (along with a few drops of Loctite blue threadlocker):

With the shovel in place, all is good. The shovel is held very tightly by the Quick Fist clamps, but with a quick tug at the clamp straps I can get the shovel out when I need it. This quick shovel install was just the beginning of some off-roady things that I had lined up for 2021 =X