Tag: anchors

2022 Ford Maverick Bed Side Rail System

Writ­ten: Feb­ru­ary 23, 2022 — Updat­ed: Decem­ber 30, 2022

  • Cost: $45 (tracks) + $24 (stud fit­tings) + $17 (ship­ping) + $13.50 (screws) = $99.50
  • Bought two 24″ L‑tracks from US Car­go Con­trol along with four L‑track sin­gle stud fit­tings to go with it. There are oth­er sizes, I just opt­ed for the two-foot­ers
  • The Mav­er­ick­’s pre-drilled screw holes are thread­ed and require M8 screws
2ft L‑track with stud fit­tings
Holes do not line up…Sigh… At least they look good

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the pre-drilled holes on the Mav­er­ick and L‑tracks do not line up, so I ini­tial­ly planned to drill 2 extra coun­ter­sunk holes in the L‑tracks to make it fit. The tracks sys­tem real­ly does look nice AND are quite light. Accord­ing to the site details, they weigh togeth­er 1.2lbs.

Next issue: the Mav­er­ick has M8 holes, the tracks use 1⁄4″ coun­ter­sunk hard­ware (though I found M6 screws fit bet­ter than the 1⁄4″). So now some holes need widen­ing

**Below is the orig­i­nal post I made using a drill to try and widen the holes in order to accept the M8 screws. It is lengthy and time con­sum­ing and ugly, hon­est­ly. Read on if you like, but ten months after the fact, I found out that all you need is a M8 thread tap and t‑handle tap­ping wrench. Prep­ping to tap the threads for the floor anchors (click me!), I test­ed it on these bed­side rails, and wow. In what took me orig­i­nal­ly a few hours, took maybe 2 min­utes. Plus, it’s MUCH nicer look­ing.

Fits
Still juts out, but if you got cre­ative, you could prob­a­bly make it more flush
If I were to do it again, I’d try the deburr tool to see if I could widen the coun­ter­sink flange
Much clean­er

You might be able to use a cham­fer or a debur­ring tool to try and set the screw flush, but I don’t have those tools yet. Thanks for read­ing! The L‑tracks are still super awe­some, and great qual­i­ty look­ing at them even now. I was able to use them once and they were sol­id sol­id sol­id. How­ev­er, Ford now offers a Cleat Tie Down Kit for $400 if you want some­thing offi­cial**

Orig­i­nal post start

M8 — no fit
1⁄4″
M6 — the most flush
Cut­ting flu­id, eye pro­tec­tion, clamps, drill, bits, scrap wood
Coun­ter­sink bit

After hav­ing fun using pow­er tools to expand the holes, I real­ized that the coun­ter­sink bit I had was too small. Huh.

Be gen­er­ous with lube
Drilling
Coun­ter­sink
Looks good!
Does­n’t fit all the way. Bit too small.

After test-fit­ting it in the truck bed, I returned to hap­pi­ly make holes. This part was fun, and it was awe­some to have suc­cess mak­ing the hole until…

Drilling hole in met­al: SUCCESS!
Uh oh. The open­ing is too small
M8 head is 5/8in or 15.87mm.
Open­ing on the non-cir­cle part is only 10mm. No bit nor rasp could help me

...major prob­lem reached. Because the holes need­ed to be in the wrong part of the track, there was no way to get the coun­ter­sink bit in. That’s not that big of a deal, but the screw not fit­ting in there at all is a huge deal.

Noth­ing worked.

So, Plan B it is. Went back to the truck bed for fur­ther scruti­ny, then planned to enlarge 2 of the holes since they were both just off by maybe half a cen­time­ter. Eas­i­er said than done. Still the issue with too small of a counter sink. This project was becom­ing a total exper­i­men­tal project. Those beau­ti­ful L‑tracks were look­ing quite…worked on.

Widen­ing (5/16 bit is very close to M8 size)
Screws don’t sit flush. Oh well.
Unused mis­take holes. ugh.

Plan C was going to be M8 sized eye­let screws. In fact, I might still do that giv­en that there is one screw hole on either side of the bed with noth­ing it.

Sin­gle M8 hole left on either side

Lots of time, teeth clench­ing, lubri­cant, and met­al shav­ings lat­er, I was sat­is­fied and went to install them.

2 tracks, M8x1.25 25mm screws, 4 wash­ers, 4 studs
Hex sock­et ratch­et dri­ver

YAY!! The screws are absolute­ly not flush, but I decid­ed that I actu­al­ly rather like it since I did­n’t spring for rail end caps and the screw heads act a bit like stops for the stud fit­tings.

Screw holds the stud in place
Easy to move spring loaded stud
Just push and move

Ignor­ing the weird drilled out holes, it looks pret­ty good! Just have to make sure not to hook any­thing to the ends and focus any force near the screw holds.

Pret­ty proud of myself and def­i­nite­ly learned new things today. Like to not brush at met­al shav­ings with your bare hands because lit­tle pieces of met­al in your fin­ger is painful.

2022 Ford Maverick Bed Measurements

2022 Ford Mav­er­ick XL Hybrid with Co-Pilot

I got the cheapo cheap­est pack­age (only added the Co-Pilot sys­tem). While it cer­tain­ly feels low cost, this gives me wig­gle room to upgrade!

Includ­ed are some mea­sure­ments I’ve tak­en of the FlexBed, pick­up bed, along with a clos­er look at the fac­to­ry screw holes.

Note: My bed nei­ther has a drop-in nor a spray-in lin­er.

Rear of Bed (near cab)

  • Green: rear wood plank divider slot
  • Blue: widest mea­sure­ment above the wheel wells
  • Yel­low: Indent on top of wheel wells
  • Pink: points to the direc­tion of truck cab, rear wall of bed

Tail­gate

  • Red: max­i­mum width open­ing of the tail­gate
  • Green: Height to top of tail­gate lip from the low­est part of bed floor (the con­cave, not con­vex por­tion of floor ridges)
  • Blue: denotes the tail­gate and both D‑pillars

Bed Side

  • Hot Pink: denotes truck cab, tail­gate, and bed floor
  • Beige: loca­tion and dis­tance between bed­side anchor screw holes
  • Medi­um Pur­ple: dis­tance between first set of bed­side screw holes
  • Orange: dis­tance between sec­ond set of bed­side screw holes
  • Yel­low: dis­tance between third set of bed­side screw holes
  • Light Blue: dis­tance between fourth set of bed­side screw holes
  • Green: length of bed­side screw hole chan­nel
  • Red: length of wheel arch shelf
  • Light Green: Space between rear of bed and rear wood divider
  • Medi­um Blue: approx­i­mate length of groove on top of wheel arch shelf
  • Dark Pur­ple: width of both wood div­er slots
  • Dark Blue: length of wheel arch shelf before it curves to the side of the bed
  • Gold: length of area between D‑Pillar and where the wheel arch starts to curve
  • Light pur­ple: dis­tance from top of bed to floor of bed

Flex Bed Notes

  • The length of the bed = the length of the ante­ri­or wood divider slot (43.5in or 110.49cm), mak­ing the Flex Bed an almost square flat wall to flat wall (see pic­tures at bot­tom of post)
  • The pre-drilled bed side holes are in unequal incre­ments
  • Bed side anchor point holes are all about 2 inch­es apart
  • The Bed­side screw hole chan­nel is use­ful for turn­ing and fit­ting the wood dividers for the flexbed
  • Floor tie down anchor point holes are dif­fer­ent from the bed side ones (scroll down to see more)
  • M6 x 1.0 are rec­om­mend­ed fas­ten­ers (Met­ric), with 1⁄4″ is most sim­i­lar in size (SAE)

Bed Side Anchor (near D‑Pillar)

  • The anchor holes (side and floor) are not thread­ed, so you’d either need self-tap­ping hard­ware or a tap­ping set.
  • Side anchor holes are M6 sized

Bed Floor Tie Down Anchor Point

  • Floor anchor holes are not thread­ed
  • They are larg­er than M6 screws, so are like­ly M8 sized
Hard to find anchors for this hole dis­tance
M6x1.0 is too small

Bed Side Screw Hole

  • Bed Side screw holes are thread­ed
  • M8 screws fit per­fect­ly inside
Thread­ed
M6x1.0 and 1⁄4″ are too small

But the M8x1.25 fits per­fect­ly!!

Pic­tures for Per­spec­tive

You can see the piece of wood which is the ante­ri­or wood divider. It fits per­fect­ly length­wise in the bed. The pos­te­ri­or divider is in place.