Tag: Tailgate Liner

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! 🙂