Serious Bed Cracks at Front Eye Bolts - New Rangers

[Jack]

Ranger (2019 and later) owners need to frequently and carefully inspect the front eye bolts. At least do a quick look from the underside of the bed.

An unpleasant surprise when we got back from a 5 day trip into NW Nevada - serious bed cracks and popped rivets around the front eye-bolt anchors. The right front Derringer was very loose and the left just a bit.

Looking it over and discussing it with the body-shop guy, it appears that the FWC install is not adequate for the thin (20ga?) Ranger bed metal for the front eye bolts. Rear seem to be OK, but should be reevaluated.

The eye bolts were installed by the dealer here in Portland per factory specs (Jeff has done a lot of installs) and he made sure the anchor plate rested on the lip of a support member. I've only had Derringers as tie-downs, so no issue of loosened turnbuckles.

The left front eye bolt was fine in November 2020 when I rewired from the truck to the camper and since that time we have traveled 6 or 7 weeks total. That includes about 250 miles of roads like those into Saline Valley. I periodically check the back tie-downs and they were fine when we started this last trip. Of course, once a tie-down loosens, the forces applied to the bed greatly increase.

I've dropped the truck off at the body shop and their custom work guy is going have a good look and get back to me on what best to do. I'll post an update.

 

[Utah]

Very disconcerting! The anchor plate is clearly overlapping one of the support members for sure.

My thought is - if the eye bolt and Derringer is pulling at an angle, then the load may still be transmitted almost entirely onto the bed sheet metal rather than onto the cross member. This is likely resulting in flexing of the (very thin) bed sheet metal which will in time cause fatigue cracks.

A good solution may be to fabricate larger anchor plates that will overlap the lip of both cross members. That way, the load will be transmitted to the cross members and not the bed sheet metal. This will prevent flexing of the bed sheet metal, which is the cause of cracking.

 

[JimBow]

I have a 2020 Ranger with a Fleet. I did the install of the plates on mine, and they look the same as yours. I have no cracks in the bed so far, but I will keep a close eye on it. I think I will be making some longer plates that will span both of those supports in the bed, maybe out of some steel plate or bar.

 

[Ruck_and_Roll]

People have had the same issues with the F-150s. FWC and their dealer network probably need some sort of modified/beefed up install for the Fords.

Mule has one:
https://www.wanderthewest.com/forum/topic/21693-mules-solution-to-the-f150-alu-bed-issues/

I installed these a few weeks ago for the front brackets.

 

[rando]

It seems there has been a lot of discussion of these problems of late. I am sure it is partly that truck manufacturers are trying to optimize the weight of the truck beds, meaning they are really not designed to withstand lifting point loads.

It sounds like the issue is almost exclusively with turn buckle installations, which kind of makes sense as the load on a turn buckle is not necessarily normal to the bed, and if (as Jack suspects) you get any slack in the system then you will get dynamic forces and then the load goes way up. With the turn buckle on the camper being out in the wings, it seems like camper flex will introduce slack on a rough roads to allow some slack and shifting of the camper.

If you don't remove your camper often, have you considered a bolt down install? From an engineering standpoint, this seems much more secure, the loads on the bolts are vertical, there is no chance of the camper shifting or flexing to introducing slack, you can tighten them to a prescribed amount and with a locking nut they will keep that tension. I have had no issues in 30,000 miles with our bolt down install onto a relatively thin aluminium tray. The downside is they are tricky to line up if you remove/reinstall the camper and you need to figure out where to drill the holes that works both for the camper and the truck bed.

 

[ski3pin]

Although I do not have a new Ford Ranger, and have not had problems with the eye bolts I mounted to the truck bed, I've always considered adding mounting brackets to the truck frame as WTW member Alley-Kat made for his truck. The link to his post is here -

Alley-Kat truck bed brackets

scroll down in post #1 to explanation and photos of the brackets.

 

[jsduty]

So I was in a chat with Mule and they claim the brackets only work for the f 150? Not with the 250 & 350's. ???????????

 

[Jack]

Update: The folks at the auto body shop felt that the FWC anchor method was totally inadequate. This is a small shop that also does custom work. They found more rivets that had pulled out. They pointed out that the bed metal is 20ga (0.9mm) and that the cross beam supports are also similar gauge sheet metal.

They are also going to take a good look at the rear eye bolt anchors and try to reinforce them as well.

I googled and found that older pickups typically have 16ga (1.6mm) bed metal - which would be why the anchor system works with the Canyon, Colorado and Nissan. The Tacomas have a different anchor system. The Ranger is the first of the thinner metal beds - mine lasted about 18 months before it cracked.

I called FWC and told them about the problem and was told that they would pass the info onto their engineers.. I do hope they take it seriously.

 

[ramblinChet]

FWC, what say you?

 

[JimBow]

This is what I did. Used 1/4"x 3" steel bar. It's overlapping near a frame support, which is toward the front of the truck. I hope this works!

 

[Jon R]

I think frame and bed twist are a big factor in causing these types of failures. Watch some youtube videos showing bed and frame twist on the newer Ford pickups to see what I mean.

The camper does not twist anywhere near as much as the frame and bed would twist in the absence of the camper, so the camper is trying to help the bed stay flat via the turnbuckles when twist occurs. The combination of a very flexible frame, a relatively rigid camper, and rigid tiedowns makes for high loads, and the bed sheetmetal is what deforms, and eventually fails first.

I think relieving the loads from frame twist is needed.

 

[Utah]

Thanks for posting that video link, Jon. I have a better appreciation now for the magnitude of loads the anchor system sees under extreme conditions. Makes me think that the standard FWC turnbuckle arrangement may normally be a weak link under high frame twist scenarios.

Now, since I have upgraded my turnbuckles to the more robust Derringer Fastguns, I wonder where the weak link will be? I will be inspecting around the anchor system under my bed later today. My setup is a 2011 Chevy Silverado 1500 extended cab truck with FWC Hawk shell.

 

[ri-f]

Thanks for posting that video link, Jon. I have a better appreciation now for the magnitude of loads the anchor system sees under extreme conditions. Makes me think that the standard FWC turnbuckle arrangement may normally be a weak link under high frame twist scenarios.

Now, since I have upgraded my turnbuckles to the more robust Derringer Fastguns, I wonder where the weak link will be? I will be inspecting around the anchor system under my bed later today. My setup is a 2011 Chevy Silverado 1500 extended cab truck with FWC Hawk shell.

Fast gun Derringers are great. Large, heavy-duty backing plates for galvanized forged-steel eye bolts, positioned under the frame struts will help with the stresses of shock loading and twist.

 

[Jon R]

Recognize that you don’t have to be off road to experience significant frame twist, especially on the very long wheel base trucks many of us have. I have an intersection near my house where the intersection itself is level, but one of the roads immediately transitions to a very steep hill at the edge of the intersection. Every time I take that turn the vehicle experiences high twisting forces. Driveway entrances can be similar. So it’s not just the rock crawlers who need to consider frame twisting.

 

[PRTwin]

I have a 2019 Ranger with a loaded Eagle that I mounted myself and have over 10,000 miles of interstate,two lane,fire roads and unimproved. I tie down at the stock six tie down points with NO trouble. The stock mount where design to secure the 1400 lbs bed payload. Take a look, mounting points a double walled band.

 

[JHanson]

I don't care how thick the sheet metal of your truck bed is, it's crazy to secure a camper with bolts anchored by nothing but fender washers, as I've seen done, or even two by four-inch plates. You're talking about a few bucks worth of steel to spread the stress over an area 5 times as large, and perhaps overlapping reinforced areas as well. Why would you not do so? I would also round off the corners of the plates to avoid any possible stress risers.

 

[Jon R]

When you crawl under the truck and look at what you can do with flat plate or other available metal if you don’t have welding and bending capability, you often are limited by the structure in how well you can distribute the load. I was able to get 6x6 flat plates under the front anchors and 6x4 plates under the rear ones. I rounded the corners and edges, and padded them with 1/16 inch hdpe sheet to try to avoid any stress concentrations. My truck is a GMC 3500HD, so the bed is more heavily built than many trucks and its frame doesn’t twist much, but I’m still planning to install some sort of strain relief feature in line with the front turnbuckles, such as the Torklift spring anchors. I take delivery this week with hard turnbuckles but will get that changed as one of my first projects. It’s probably overkill on my particular truck, but I don’t want to risk damage.

 

[Jack]

Update 1:

$1100 later and I'm almost ready to put the camper back on. They welded a plate underneath and then placed a cross bar between the two bed ribs - see pictures. If you look carefully at the top plates (that were underneath), you can see that the FWC plates are slightly bowed. The shop noted that the the back eye bolts had also pulled up slightly.

The damage appears to happen quickly. I checked all of the derringers at about 19000 miles. I also checked the back two derringers at 22000 miles. I recall they didn't move much - but that means they were probably a bit looser than before. I adjusted the derringers after about the first 700 miles but did not adjust them thereafter - they were tight to at least 19000 miles.

We've got 23300 miles on the ranger - a mix of freeway, two lane blacktop, good gravel, washboard gravel, two track and some rough two track. I suspect that washboard and potholes generate the strongest loads.

I've ordered the Torklift spring loads. Torklift also has instructions on how to tighten the derringers to 300lbs tension. The grommet marker trick provides a visual indicator if the tension has changed.

I will replace the rear 6" x 3" aluminum plates with 7" x 5" x 1/4" steel plates with a 20ga spacer that butts to the edge of the cross beam lip to evenly distribute the load across the plate. My micrometer measures 1mm so I think the cross beam metal thickness is also 20ga.

Mine was the first Ranger for the dealer in Portland (dealer prior to Mule) and I recall Jeff calling down to the factory to make sure the install was correct. It's clear now that overlapping the 3"x6" plate with the cross beam lip was a mistake. Because the plate lacked a spacer, the load was concentrated on the overlap and the far edge of the plate. Of course, not overlapping the plate would have been worse - 20ga steel alone can not handle the load.

At a very minimum FWC needs to provide a steel cross beam for the front mounts and steel plates and spacers for the rear. That's probably an additional materials cost to FWC of about $30 - a lot less than the bars for the Tacomas. An even better solution would be a brace similar to what Mule offers for the F150 for both front and back.

 

[Jack]

Update 2:

The damage at the rear mounts required some spot welds.



I replaced the 3/16" x 3" x 6" aluminum plates with 1/4" x 4" x 7" steel plates and inserted a 7" x 3" piece of 20ga steel that butted against the lip of the 20ga cross rib. This provided a more even distribution of load along the rib as well as a more even distribution of load across the bed itself.

The 7" x 3" 20ga steel sheet can be easily bowed with your bare hands. One of the rear aluminum plates was also slightly bowed. The bowed aluminum plates clearly indicate that the bed (and cross rib) bowed, which means that the FWC mounting system on the Ranger is clearly inadequate.

The final rear assembly:

 

[Casa Escarlata Robles Too]

Great you now have that taken care of.
Hopefully you shouldn't have any more problems.
Frank