Tag: Pickup

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 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.