Bed extender

[Buckshot]

...............Back in 2002 we needed a new car and my wife just had to have a Ford Sport-Trac. She was right that she could get her gardening stuff in there and there was certainly enough luggage room. However for hauling something really 'Pickup Size' the bed was just too dang short.

You can get 48" wide stuff in there but it lays up on top of the wheel wells. I'd seen some of the shortbed pickups running around with those bed extenders that lay out on the tailgate. However they seemed awfully flimsy and just extended the floorspace. I figured I could come up with something a bit more useable.

I drew up some plans and then went to the muffler shop to have some 1.5" muffle pipe bent up.



I came up with this. There were already holes for one of these in either side of the tailgate bed ends so I used those as a pivot point. Just like those you buy, this one will flip up inside trhe bed so you can close the tailgate. The reason the top pipe is bent with two 45* angles is so it will clear the rear of the wheel wells when it's flipped over inside the bed. Otherwise it's ride too high and you couldn't close the tonneau.



Here it is out on the ground. My idea for making it better, or more useable had to do with hauling lumber or plywood. I designed it so the top rail would be removeable, as below:



With the top rail off, the middle rail is the same height as the top of the wheel well archs in the bed. This way plywood will lay flat. To connect them together, in the middle photo you can just see a 1/2" hole through the horizontal pipe over each of the 2 end vertical pipes. Then in the bottom photo 2 more holes in the same place over the 2 central vertical pipes.

There are 2 long bolts to which I'd welded 1.5" OD steel discs after cutting off the hex heads. These are so you can turn them with bare hands. The 2 bolts go down through the vertical pipes and thread into captured nuts inside the middle pipe. In the bottom photo you can just make out the collars surrounding the nuts, and the 2 horizontal pipes fit down over the collars when you put it in place.

The bent "L" pieces at either end of the top rail sit on top of the box sections tieing the 2 bottom rails together. The short leg of the "L" has a hole in it and the top of each box section also has a recessed captured nut. A bolt goes down through the hole of the "L" section and is threaded into the captured nut of the box section. Like the 2 bolts on the center-rear, I didn't want to have to use tools to install or remove them, so each of the side bolts had a 2" long 1/4" bar welded across the hexhead to get ahold of for turning.

The 4 short legs rest on the tailgate, and since the tailgate has a plastic liner I attached a PVC pipe coupling with a couple selftaping tech screws to each leg. Alltogether it took about a day and a half to go get the pipe bent and weld it all together. I spraypainted it metallic silver. It came out pretty nice.

...................Buckshot

[Lloyd Smale]

pretty slick buckshot!

[PatMarlin]

Very nice Ric.

I have one of those Harbor Freight pipe bending rigs that I've been wanting to try out. That would be a good one....

[garandsrus]

Buckshot,

Nice work... I use a homemade version of this to haul lumber, plywood, canoe's etc.

John

[PatMarlin]

I bought that exact hitch extender at Harbor Freight on sale for bout' $19.

Maybe Cabelas manufactures it in the USA though..

[Nueces]

Buckshot, that are slick!

Our new 'spare' is the wife's old '02 Sport Trac. I will be cipherin' that design....

Mark

[Buckshot]

..............Thanks guys, it IS a bit heavier then the aluminum and plastic ones they sell to keep your groceries from sliding out. However I've had 6 sheets of MDF and twenty 2x6's laying on it without a problem.

PatMarlin. I have one of those Harbor Freight pipe bending rigs that I've been wanting to try out. That would be a good one....

............When I went to the muffler shop and said I had some custom bending to do he said they charged $5 a bend, which would have been $40 and I would have gladly paid it. However, when he was done he said he had so much fun figuring out where to bend and making them, he only charged me for the pipe!

...............Buckshot

[grumpy one]

I must be getting typecast as the guy who always wants to focus on the "be careful of" part of these projects, and here I go again. I don't think anything I say will be outside what Buckshot already thought through, but there may be somebody else who finds it useful.

When driving a vehicle it is best if the front wheels are in firm contact with the ground, so that steering inputs have some kind of influence over the trajectory. The vehicle manufacturer takes this into account, but only to the minimum extent necessary to allow safe operation. Don't expect the engineers to have allowed for you to do something dangerous, like putting a heavy load behind the rear axle, or putting anything much at all on a roof-rack. SUVs, in particular, are now sold with low-adhesion tyres so they won't roll over on sharp turns even without a roof rack.

There is a type of pickup which is called a "crew cab" here and may be called a "dual cab" in the US. If you look at the vehicle from the side, the first thing you notice is that the entire load tray is behind the rear wheels. Putting even the recommended load on those things is a good way to end up with big trouble on a freeway in a cross-wind, particularly if the road is wet. The kind of accident that might happen is particularly nasty, if total loss of steering happens suddenly at highway speed.

So far as bed-extenders are concerned, how useful they are depends on what kind of vehicle you put them on, how much load you put on them, and how far or fast you go. If you took a dual cab pickup, extended the bed, put a heavy load on the extension, then headed down a wet Interstate in a strong cross-wind, you might be in more trouble than Flash Gordon.

Most board members are probably irritated right now because they already knew all that and consider it too obvious to talk about. My concern isn't with them, it is with anyone who hasn't ever had the experience of having the front wheels hydroplane at speed, and has no idea how bad it is for the bowels.


Geoff

[MT Gianni]

I remember coming down Parleys summit? on I-15 into Salt lake City at the age of 16 in a VW Beetle and the speedometer was at 90. I had throttle left but no steering as the front wheels were off the ground. I learned a lesson there, Thanks Geoff. Gianni.

[Buckshot]

...............Geoff, Yeah this wasn't intended for any long trip type thing. It's for hauling the occassional bunch of building materials, and stuff here in town. The bed on the Sport Trac is short enough so that my old military rifles with their 29" bbl have to lay diagonally . So 8' 2x4's almost have as much hanging out as there is inside the bed without the extender.

...................Buckshot

[Slowpoke]

I remember coming down Parleys summit? on I-15 into Salt lake City at the age of 16 in a VW Beetle and the speedometer was at 90. I had throttle left but no steering as the front wheels were off the ground. I learned a lesson there, Thanks Geoff. Gianni.

Musta been running on fumes

good luck

[Ricochet]

I'd've liked to extend my bed time this morning.