Tag: Installation

DIY: 2022 Ford Maverick Tailgate Liner Install

10/9/22

  • What: Installing an OE Ford Tail­gate Lin­er on a 2022 Ford Mav­er­ick
  • Cost: $75 plus ship­ping
  • Time: 15–20 min­utes
  • Dis­claimer: I am NOT an expert. I am an ama­teur car own­er with pass­ing expe­ri­ence deal­ing with minor car mod­i­fi­ca­tions.

The lin­er was deliv­ered in a plas­tic bag and not in its own box, which is real­ly fine, because it’s a super hard, dense plas­tic meant for abuse. It must be the same mate­r­i­al as the drop-in bed­lin­er. It also comes with small bag labeled Kit Hard­ware P/U Box Ford Mav BT 2022+ (part num­ber: NZ6J-9928546-AB).

Upside
Under­side
Made in USA

These are the con­tents of the hard­ware kit. I have no idea what the oth­er pieces are for. Some met­al pieces and extra thread­ed retain­er clips
Part infor­ma­tion for the hard­ware kit

Instead of an instruc­tion sheet, the includ­ed paper guides you HERE where you can find the instruc­tions in PDF. Sad­ly, the instruc­tions for this install aren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly detailed, though ini­tial read seems straight­for­ward enough.

OKAY. Here we go.

Used a T25 screw­driv­er to remove the 8 screw/washer com­bos already in in the tail­gate.

Here’s a fun look at what’s under­neath that plate, there. It’s the lock mech­a­nism and here, I just have the man­u­al lock.

Whole pan­el comes off
Man­u­al lock mech­a­nism

This is where it start­ed get­ting com­pli­cat­ed for me. What is the point of the 4 stick­ers they have? The instruc­tions look like you just stick them in the cor­ner of the met­al? So, I did that. Per­haps it’s to pro­tect the threads from water and rust?

B is the stick­er, and it says to put it in the 4 cor­ners
I don’t know?

Then the real prob­lem came up: the instruc­tions state that now a T20 sock­et is need­ed to replace the screws. It occurred to me that the 2 screws includ­ed in the hard­ware kit are what they’re talk­ing about. Uh oh. Ford’s parts site was­n’t use­ful, either, because there are no pic­tures on there.

It came with tape to guard the cor­ners. Made sure to remove that
Orig­i­nal screws fit fine over the 4 mid­dle holes
Side holes with the orig­i­nal and the intend­ed screws with larg­er wash­er and hex head for com­par­i­son

Well. Okaaay. Sooo. I decid­ed to reuse 4 of the orig­i­nal screws because they seem to fit the 4 mid­dle ports of the lin­er. The 4 out­side ones have a larg­er hole which means that the orig­i­nal screw’s wash­ers were too small for. I end­ed up scroung­ing around in the house for loose wash­ers or pos­si­ble screws, and mirac­u­lous­ly found some black wash­ers slight­ly larg­er than the ones on the exist­ing screws. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the wash­er’s hole was too large. I then dou­bled them up and it worked, though the screws do stick up more out of the lin­er.

Cor­rect screw/washer
Orig­i­nal screw/washer
Togeth­er for com­par­i­son

Dou­bled them up because the extra wash­er’s hole is too large for the screw
Does stick up a lit­tle

Since I did­n’t have the hex-head screws, I could­n’t torque to the 2.4Nm (1.8lb-ft) as instruct­ed. I tried not to screw it too tight­ly, but not too loose­ly either. Hope­ful­ly it stays put. Feels good. I tugged on it a few times.

Before
After

Hur­ray! 🙂

2022 Ford Maverick Tie Down Anchors

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

The 2022 Ford Mav­er­ick requires Ford OE anchors (as of right now). When I first bought the truck, these pic­tures were of the Curt brand D‑ring anchors I found. At the time, nei­ther they nor any oth­er D‑ring anchor out there fit.

Curt 1–1/2″ hole
Uh oh…
Bot­tom hole is cen­tered

Ford OEM D‑Ring Floor Anchors

Ford now offers the D‑ring anchors on their parts site. You can find them here: D‑rings (Comes 1 per pack­age) and screws (Comes 4 per pack­age)

Materials

  • Need­ed: T‑Handle Ratch­et­ing Tap Wrench, M8 x 1.25 thread tap, cut­ting oil, Qty: 2 - Hook Tie Down — Rear, Cen­ter — Part #: NZ6Z60550A74A, Qty 1: Screw — Part #: W721941S450B
  • Cost: $105.98 (2 D‑rings) + $9.90 (1 pkg screws) + tax = $122.84
  • Dif­fi­cul­ty: Easy
  • Time: Around 5 min­utes a hole

Install

My tap and die set. You only need the M8x1.25 tap and wrench
Ratch­et­ing wrench with tap
1.25

Watched a few YouTube videos first. I seemed pret­ty straight­for­ward. I’d been lol­ly­gag­ging on instal­la­tion because I was ner­vous that I’d mess up and break the tap. It’s real­ly not hard, in fact it’s quite easy once you get through the first hole tap­ping.

All that’s need­ed to do it
Vir­gin holes
Dry-fit

Basi­cal­ly, you don’t want to force it. Get the cut­ting oil on there. The begin­ning is the most cru­cial part in get­ting it lev­el and threads start­ed. Some down­ward force is need­ed right in the begin­ning, but as soon as the tap can stand up on its own, then it’s time let the tap do its thing by just turn­ing the han­dles. The ratch­et­ing func­tion was para­mount for the Mav­er­ick giv­en how close the holes are to the bed sides. Turn the tap and feel it cut until you feel resis­tance. Then turn it the oppo­site direc­tion to clear the met­al shav­ings. Don’t for­get the cut­ting oil. All of the videos instruct­ed a short back-and-forth motion. I found it eas­i­er to tap, then back out a ways, then go for­ward again. Halfway through, I would back it all the way out, clear the shav­ings out, and then go back in to pre­vent it from real­ly get­ting stuck in there.

Just get­ting start­ed
Halfway
Test fit, not quite there

Even­tu­al­ly, when you hit the bot­tom of the hole, it gets super easy. That’s how you know you’re done. When fin­ish­ing, it was much eas­i­er to free the tap from the han­dle and just unscrew it like a reg­u­lar screw­driv­er with­out the ratch­et­ing func­tion.

Right around here, it starts get­ting super easy to tap
Eas­i­er to just ditch the ratch­et­ing han­dle at the end and unscrew it by hand

Yay! I timed the last hole tap and it took me 4 min­utes and 15 sec­onds to do; that’s with me tak­ing my time, back­ing all the way out halfway through, clean­ing up shav­ings. Easy does it. The first one prob­a­bly took some­thing like 10 min­utes. I have to say work­ing around my roll up ton­neau cov­er real­ly gets the back aching. LOL.

Close up of thread­ed
vs. unthread­ed (how the Mav­er­ick comes)

Screws took a T45 dri­ver bit.

T45
Screw it in there!

Boom! Done! MUCH eas­i­er than I thought it’d be!

Bedside Anchors

  • Bed Side Anchors
    • Cost: $20 (4 anchors) + $7.50 (25 screws) = $27.50
    • Bought some anchors off Ama­zon which fit per­fect­ly with the Mav­er­ick­’s pre-drilled, unthread­ed, M6 holes.
    • Also bought M6x1.0 — 25mm screws. Decid­ed on the flange head, but you don’t have to
    • Sad­ly, I nev­er did end up installing these, because I could­n’t find what I did with them, and then I sold the Mav­er­ick.