Tag: Automobile

DIY Light Up Cable Protector

writ­ten and updat­ed 3/04/23

What: Out­door rub­ber cord and cable pro­tec­tor ramp that lights up

Why: To charge a Bat­tery Elec­tric Vehi­cle (BEV) from a 120-Volt out­let by run­ning an exten­sion cord over a side­walk. This is for very infre­quent use (emer­gency charg­ing in the event of poor mem­o­ry or inclement weath­er). Not only is it a ramp which low­ers the chance of trip­ping, but when placed at night, hav­ing it pulse-shine increas­es vis­i­bil­i­ty. Cou­ple it with a spot­light or porch light­ing, should be plen­ty of indi­ca­tion of a haz­ard.

Sup­plies: Cable pro­tec­tor ramp, util­i­ty knife, razor scraper, bat­tery pow­ered/­cut­table/out­door-rat­ed LED strip with light modes, dou­ble sided stick­er dots, pli­ers (option­al), paint scraper (option­al), Shop Vac­u­um

Cost: 2‑Channel Cable Pro­tec­tor Ramp ($54.19) + LED Strip ($11.99) + Dou­ble-Sided Stick­ers ($5.99) = $72.17

Time: 1 — 2 hours

Process

  • Gath­er Sup­plies (the rub­ber ramp, itself, is extreme­ly smelly, so would rec­om­mend a few days of off gas unless stor­ing in a shed our out­side)

  • Test fit, mea­sure, and mark
Per­ma­nent mark­er

  • Start cut­ting. Use of razor blades are the best for cut­ting through thick rub­ber. Make sure to use safe­ty glass­es and gloves. Be care­ful!
Cut wedges

  • After remov­ing pieces in incre­ments, use the razor scraper to clean up the bot­tom.

  • Test fit again. In this case, the bat­tery case still does­n’t fit, so now to widen the side.
Does­n’t fit with the cord in there, too

  • Use pli­ers, the paint scraper, blades all togeth­er to remove the rub­ber

twist, pull, what­ev­er it takes
lev­er­ing
There it is!

  • Yay! It fits now!
This is a 10-gauge exten­sion cord

  • At first, I thought I’d need to drill holes to make the light more vis­i­ble, but I wast­ed time doing that because it works per­fect­ly with­out the holes!

  • Sticky dots now, to hold the LED lights in place. I am aware that the LED lights have an adhe­sive, too, but for ease of removal/replacement I opt­ed for the sticky dots
They were so annoy­ing to stick, I need­ed some­thing met­al and thin to help me place them

  • Test time!
No porch lights

  • Yay!! It works! I was real­ly, real­ly ner­vous about it out there all night long, but it worked real­ly well, and noth­ing bad hap­pened accord­ing to the cam­eras I had trained on it. I also had the porch lights on, but with­out the lights, it looked real­ly great, too. You can’t tell in these pho­tos, but I left the mode on a fade in and out. Grant­ed, this was win­ter, and there are typ­i­cal­ly very few peo­ple wan­der­ing around in the cold, dark, but I’m glad to see that in a pinch, the option is there to charge my EV overnight.

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.