Truck Bed Tearing in Baja

[SDJeff]

I just returned from a 8 day trip to Baja. I first put my new to me 2006 Hawk on my new 2011 F-250 and did 2 “little” trips for a couple days each, without much off-roading. On both trips my turnbuckles kept coming loose (especially in front) and I just thought this was typical, especially when new. Prior to Baja I made sure they were all tight (though not over tightened) and headed south. On the first day, I noticed at El Rosario that one front one was quite loose and I had not been off road. By Catavina (with a little off road) the 2 front ones were quite loose and the back a bit. I tightened them a bit and in the morning looked under the truck, where I could see the bed was pulled up in the area of the two front mounts and that the metal was actually starting to tear. In Guerrero Negro, I went to a truck place that created two metal plates that they installed under the truck bed. This was a decent idea, but did not really deal with the ripping of the metal. They then tightened the turnbuckles, but by the next day they were loose again. My guess was that if the metal would pull up more, the buckles would become loose, even if the buckles themselves had not loosened. I put on some ratchet straps to anchor the front two jack mounts to the frame to give me a bit of piece of mind, though both straps eventually broke before I got home and had to be redone. I did make it back to San Diego ok, but now I am trying to figure out what repairs to make and what to do to prevent this in the future. I absolutely love my Hawk other than these mounting issues.

First, what do you folks think of the metal deflecting and tearing? Is this common? Do you think this was a problem at how the bed was made/welded? I know people with 4Wcampers who do serious offroad stuff and they have never had this problem.

Second, I am considering doing the “bolt thru” mounting system advocated by some on this list. Are people still doing this and if so, how do you like it? How many locations do you bolt thru and which type of bolts do you use? What size plates do you put underneath the truck bed? I spoke to Jeff at ATC and he seemed to advocate this approach if I am going to go offroad a lot and not going to take my camper off very much, which I do not plan to do. My camper is on 1 inch of boards to elevate the camper so that it clears my cab (the Ford cab is higher than others). Is this a problem for the bolt thru option?

I could also do the bolt on approach and still have turnbuckles for a redundant backup option. Is there a point to getting the truck bed fixed/welded if I am going to do the bolt thru option? I assume I need to fix the truck bed (or maybe put in bigger plates) if I am still going to use turnbuckles. Any thoughts or other suggestions? Thank you.

PS – The plate you see in the photo is what the person in Guerrero Negro put on. I think it will keep the bolt from pulling through the truck bed, but it doesn’t seem like it really addresses the tearing of the metal.

 

[SDJeff]

Oops, I don't think I got the photo to post. I hope it works this time!
Sorry for my poor techno skills.

 

[DirtyDog]

Gotta put nuts on those turnbuckles. NUT UP! I really think they should do this from the factory. I've never had any deformation or tearing on my 2008 250 and I've done a fair amount of off road. I would guess that as your turnbuckles loosened, you drove a certain distance with them loose and the camper was able to move and apply dynamic force on your eyebolts.

 

[Cort]

its strange how some folks have issues with the turnbuckles loosing up....I have not had this issue at all and I think(meaning I could be totally wrong) a lot of this may have to do with the angle of the turnbuckles.....the front and back should be pulling against each other and they should do the same side to side. I have done some very serious off road driving with my rig and don't have any deformation or tearing.

I think DD is right on here...you loosened up, which allowed the camper to move and then exert a huge force on the turnbuckle mounts (truck bed) when they finally came tight.

The good news is this should be a fairly easy fix for anyone who does fab work and in the end you should end up with a stronger mount than you had in the beginning.

Cort

 

[SunMan]

Jeff, I've got a corner pulling up a bit in my truck bed courtesy of Baja and those "oh sh!t" vados that pop up from time to time. I would have never known about it until I took my camper off and honestly haven't fixed it yet, it's not that bad and the turnbuckle is still doing its thing. One question...Did you not already have plates backing your eye bolts? As Cort mentioned a fabricator could probably do a pretty easy fix. That and nuts on your turnbuckles and you should be back in business (or go for the bolt thru program, no experience there). Good luck.

 

[K7MDL]

Plates under the camper were mentioned to lift the camper higher. These may be "slippery" and making the turnbuckles work harder to retain the camper in position on the sideways hits. Directly on bedliner the friction might reduce the stress loading. Besides a LineX bedliner onmy truck, I elected to keep to keep my Happijac tie down system front positioning cones installed from my full size camper setup to add to side to side movement reduction.

 

[rotti]

Back in 1983 I bought a new Granby and mounted it on a new 3/4 ton Chevy 4wd truck. At that time the factory was here in Denver and the only mounting system they used was 4 elevator bolts thru the floor (I think thats what they called them, flat thin head about a one inch head diameter). Underneath was a fender washer, a split lock washer and nut.

Not once in 23 years and 200k of a lot of Rocky mountain 4wd roads did I have a problem or for that matter even check the mounting system. The few times I did remove the camper everything was snug. On and off was easy using a creeper underneath. I did have a heavy rubber bed matt installed and I think that may help "stick" everything together.

I think on my new rig I will go old school on the mounting system. I discussed this with Stan at the show here in Denver and he confirmed that they still do that install and my impression was that he may prefer that method? Please confirm with FWC/Stan.

 

[pvstoy]

My camper is on 1 inch of boards to elevate the camper so that it clears my cab (the Ford cab is higher than others).

I think the first thing to do is permently mount the 1 inch board to the bottom of the camper to make it as flat and square as possible if you want to use turn buckles. If it is just floating between the camper and truck bed, you will have a rocking effect that will surely be pulling at the eye bolts and pull up the corners. A one inch board does not sounds like it would give you problems, but is the camper laying flat to the spacer and is the spacer laying flat to the bed? Undo the turn buckles and go to each corner and really rock the camper and see how much it rocks, now think how much more forces while driving offroad. ( you know when itiems re-arrange them selves inside the camper).

Bolting through the floor at the four corners with the 1 inch spacer still floating will give you clamping forces and help prevent the rocking at the corners that turn buckles allow. Make sure you use plates at both ends of the bolt to spread the load out so the head won't pull through the wood or bed.

 

[EdoHart]

SDJeff,

You said that the truck place created 2 metal plates which they installed under the truck bed. The best solution would be to sandwich the truck bed between 2 metal plates at each eyebolt. That is from top to bottom - eyebolt, metal plate, truck bed, metal plate, lock washer and nut, or lock nut.

Also, using the correct eyebolts will make a big difference. If you used the kind of eyebolt you might find at home depot, as in the first picture below, it can deform more easily, thereby allowing some slop/movement. A "shoulder" eyebolt, as seen in the second picture, is less likely to be bent.

I carefully planned the mounting location of my eyebolts to be centered between corrugations on my truck bed, and I modified 2" square washers with a grinder to fit those same corrugations above and below the truck bed, and I haven't had any problems despite some pretty rough offroading.

 

[DanoT]

I mentioned this in another nthread but it is worth repeating: Coyote RV uses ratcheting straps instead of eye bolts. They can be tightened from ouside the camper simply by using the ratchet mechanism and the strap has some give built into it to take the stress instead of the truck bed.

 

[SDJeff]

Hello,

To answer Sunman's question, I did not have plates backing up the eyebolts at the time of install. The plates were a fix by a place in Baja, though I think they are too small as they did not cover the torn area.

Also, as far as the wood under the camper, it was not loose. We had screwed it into the bottom of the camper to match how the beams run in the bottom of the camper. Those boards never got loose as far as I can tell and are much like what others on the forum have down to elevate their campers for bed/cab clearance reasons.

I appreciate all the info/thoughts so far. This forum is an continues to be great. Thanks.

 

[SunMan]

That could be a large part of the issue, i think most folks have steel plates sandwiched on both sides of their forged eye bolts as Edo mentioned. I would get some fabricated and installed before another Baja trip.

 

[DonM]

We have had both front corners of the truck bed bend up (about 2 inches on one side) after some very rough roads, no problems after adding 1 1/2 by 6 by 3/16 inch supports under the bed that were heated and bent to fit the curve. Large washers on top help. I also added lateral support for the front corners using a 'floating' 2x6 that is cut to fit snugly over the rubber blocks, extend out to the inside of the box on both sides and support the front from side to side force. As was mentioned earlier, I think the problem was that the turnbuckles worked loose and allowed too much movement. No problems since but I wish I had known about adding nuts to the turnbuckles to lock them in initially.

 

[chnlisle]

How about some pix of your fix?

 

[DonM]

How about some pix of your fix?


The drawing is obviously not to scale, the 2x6 is snug to the plywood backing plates of the rubber bumpers on the camper and to the interior walls of the truck box. It does not touch the floor of the box, the remaining strip of wood over the bumpers is about 2 inches thick. The metal on the truck box is pretty thin, the metal strips have a rubber gasket, the strips then were sprayed with undercoat (the duct tape over the threads was before the spray to hopefully make removal possible at a later date). It is an amateurish remedy to prevent the camper from swiveling again resulting in it touching the box on the one front corner and having inches of clearance on the other. So far (about 10k miles) everything has stabilized. If I knew then what I have read and learned now, I would bolt the camper to the truck bed through the box supports and be done with it, the extra time to unbolt would be far less than all the fooling around I have done.

 

[Darryla]

Just FYI, there is a bit of discussion about this topic on the site if you look for it. There are a bunch of opinions about directly bolting the camper to the bed. The main point is that the camper flexes and you need to accommodate for it somehow and bolting the camper directly to the bed does not allow for the needed flex in some folks opinion.

One time I hit a pot hole on a gravel road so hard it tilted the camper forward smashing the front panel of my Tacoma truck bed. When I took the camper of the replace the panel I noticed that the back two eye bolts had lifted and bowed the bed upward and forward. I put large pieces of 1/4 steel plate on the underside of the bed that the eye bolts, bolt through. I also bolted a 2 1/2 square by 3 feet long piece of plastic across the front width of the bed that the camper now butts against instead of it butting up against the front panel. I just thought I had cheap thin gauge metal for a truck bed. It seems to be working ok now.

Darryl

 

[DonM]

It seems as mentioned earlier and in some other threads that quite a few people have added reinforcement, I now drive a little more carefully with the camper on but as you say there is a lot of flex on really rough terrain (many of our roads are being decommissioned making the trips rougher)both in the camper and the truck box. Having said that the metal in the box is a lot thinner than my last truck (taco) and I don't see truck beds getting beefier in the near future. Have a lot of people reinforced the inside with wood or put in a layer to stiffen the floor of the truck bed?

 

[UglyScout]

When/if you double plate the eye bolts to the body - use 2 different size plates so they can not tear out as a pair. If you use matching size plates they can work together like a can opener and tear a perfect size hole through sheetmetal...

 

[DonM]

Thanks, I wouldn't have thought of that and it makes a lot of sense. I'm hoping to get a little more out of what I have done, the rear bolts on mine go through the cross member so they are pretty strong, I contemplated putting in another cross member in the box in front and put the bolts through that but that would reduce flex and there seems to be a balance needed.