DIY pickup bed cover that will carry a load.

[strantor]

Speaking of spray liners, this just popped up. Haven't watched it yet

That guy makes great videos. I had not seen that one but I watched his other one for the rattle can bed liners. Raptor performed about middle of the road, in line with its price tag. After watching that video I'm very glad I primed it before spraying the bed liner.

 

[strantor]

Well I tried re-orienting the gas struts a dozen different ways and they just aren't going to cut it with the added weight of the aluminum sheet.

Just ordered (4) 300lb gas struts of the same dimensions as the 200lbs ones I basedthe original geometry on. Hope those work or the modifications are going to be more radical than I'd anticipated.

If you look closely at the picture above you can see that the bed cover is indeed stronger than the bed, as I peeled the bed rail up like opening a tin can by lifting the bed cover without fully retracting the locking bars.

A few surgical hammer whacks got the metal back where it goes but the plastic was stubborn. It wanted to stay in its new position and had to be coerced with the heat of a few quick torch passes.

I'll have to add a spring-loaded "unlock" position to the linkage to prevent this happening again. It currently springs into the "lock" position but not "unlock."

 

[Midniteoyl]

Ouch

 

[strantor]

Turns out the new geometry combined with the 300lb struts is perfect, performs exactly how I wanted.

Very happy to mark this project DONE (as done as it will ever get) on the list.

Some more photos:

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

You might want to install supports from the bottom of the bed, to the bottom of eh bed rail.

The fleet guy at work won’t let people install cross box tool boxes, because about five years ago he started noticing fatigue cracks in the bed rails form the weight sitting on them.

Good thing was that he is now a lot more willing to buy utility beds. And he is letting us upgrade to heavier duty trucks with the beds. He was bitching to our boss about how much I was overloading the half ton I had. When I was off for two weeks, they went wand weight my truck and sure enough I was over weight.

Then they went back to the yard and took everything off my truck to see what i was carrying that I didn’t need to. The decision was that I needed everything I had. So, my new truck is an F350, with a utility bed, with a bed cover, and a bed roller.

 

[strantor]

You might want to install supports from the bottom of the bed, to the bottom of eh bed rail.

Good call. I plan to, before carrying anything of serious weight on it. To date, this is all it's carried:

The bed cover itself is heavy, but I think (hope) not heavy enough to cause a problem.

 

[Jstpssng]

Despite your stated disappointments it looks pretty good and should serve you well. It seems like they're only cosmetic.
I'm looking forward to see your future modifications so that it handles the loads you built it for.

 

[sodamo]

Excellent job

 

[aczlan]

Ready to test your bed cover?

Aaron Z

 

[dieselscout80]

That needs to be in the dumb loads thread in the towing forum!