The old roll n lock bed cover that was 15+ years old was done.
This was a replacement that I had been avoiding for some time because it’s expensive and time consuming, but I couldn’t ignore it any longer.
Here it is removed and headed for the trash. It didn’t go peacefully-it was so worn out and jammed up it had to come out in a lot more pieces then it should have.
Here’s the brand spanking’ new unit-a Pace Edward’s electric version. All aluminum, no vinyl top to fail. And the first thing I did with this expensive thing is tear it all apart to see how it works and cut it up and modify it.
So much for the warranty. 😄😄😬
After a LOT of careful measuring, I cut a big chunk of the rolling cover off.
The idea here is quite simple-take a bed cover ment for a normal truck bed, measure the normal truck bed width, measure the service bed width, and then simply cut everything down the same amount to make it all narrower.
The problem is, that bed cover is just north of 3 grand, and it I make a measuring, math, or cutting mistake, it’s all trash.
No pressure.
With the point of no return passed, it was time to figure out how the motorized canister that holds the bed cover is built-and how to take it apart and modify it.
And there it all is-exactly 15 3/16” narrower than it was.
Turns out the bed rails needed modifications too, so into the cold saw they went!
The bed rail clamps-very cleverly designed to firmly grip to the bed rails of a normal truck bed-would not work with a service bed, so into the mill they went for some weight loss.
And look at that!
I measured, mathed, and cut correctly and it all fit like it was made to be!
Which should have mentioned that this job was pretty much done.
Except it turns out that this canister is considerably bigger than the old one and that created some tell issues with the bed slide that now couldn’t close because it hit the canister.
Rut-Roh Raggy!!! 🙄
I ended up modifying the canister drains for maximum clearance, cutting off a big chunk of the bed slide front header/cargo retainer, and making a new header that conformed to the canisters shape and protects the canister and drains from damage.
Here it is from inside the bed looking aft ( aft because you know, this IS a boating site after all!😄😄) with the bedside out.
With the bedside and bed cover now playing nice with each other-this project should be wrapped up, right?
Unfortunately, no. 🙄
One last detail to deal with.
Ol’ Yeller has a lift gate, and it poses some challenges to keeping everything dry and secure.
Luckily, I had figured out a pretty good way to deal with those challenges with the last bed cover by building a hinged flap that fits the somewhat awkward contours of the lift gate and ties everything together fairly well.
So I just needed to adapt that flap to the new bed cover, which fortunately was not too difficult.
I’ll need to send the flap out to powder coat and put new weatherstripping on it-but that wraps up the rather involved new bed cover installation.
Thankfully everything works great and the motorized bed cover is way better in every way than the old manual one!👍👍