bed stabilizer how-to

[Captain Awesome]

Blue Son of a Bitch!.lol the only problem that were coming across now is the bottom mounts. there starting to bend up the ones that are attached to the bed bolts. if you need to tighten them lots to fix the bed sides you should try straighten the bed before tightening up the rods. cause if you need to tighten them to much it starts to pull up on the bottom mount pulling them off the bed and bending them some what. try hooking a ratchet strap to the top 2 mounts and pulling the bed sides in to help straighten them before final install.

 

[BDRAG]

I would suggest a comealong to do that. DAMN! You boys are rough on these daily drivers! HAHAaaaa.

BLUE! I had mine anodized with a batch from work. Slipped them in. Opps! Now they know! SHIT!

BDRAG

 

[Dv8tor]

It may be just me but I like to overkill things with beefyness. If your saying that the bottom mounts are bending up, I can see why. Does anyone remember when Turf Tamer started this solution to the problem and made it aware in the Raptor community and had Outlaw make them? This is going to be my first attempt at trying to add a link to my post so bare with me if I do it wrong.

http://www.fordraptorforum.com/f85/outlaw-raptor-bed-brace-review-20936/

 

[blockdoc]

So if I have the stowable bed extender & wanted to use this, I'd have to remove the bed extenders, right?

I guess I could remove the extenders before a run & put them back when I would return to my normal street queen usage.

 

[strafe]

I was very happy with my bed stabilizers until we took them out for a offroad beating yesterday and the gap started reappearing. The bed bolt mounts had bent up so I used a heavy duty ratchet strap to over bend the side's in with the tailgate down and left it on all night. We I removed the ratchet strap the bed sides returned to the original spread position with no change. I had the straps bending the tail end in a good two inches on each side and had them in this position for almost 10 hours with no change to the shape. I then reapplied the stabilizers and tightened them up for the drive to work and by the time I had gotten to work the gap had started widening again. There needs to be a better solution to keep the wall attachment points from bending and the bed bracket from doing the same. The product is a great idea but it needs some fine tuning.

 

[TMX Engineer]

Gotten several text about the problem, we are working on it now. Few questions to help me figure this out.

-Do you have a bed liner/bed rug/bed mat/spray in?
-Do you have any D-rings or any other attachment using the same bed bolts?

The pictures I have seen show a stack up that would lift that side of the mount during tightening of the bed bolt, before tightening the rod.

You guys can send me pictures to [email protected] we will get a handle on this and get it fixed.

 

[Captain Awesome]

mine are not bad yet but i never had bad bed spread like Strafe. i put mine on as a preventative measure. i have bed liner also

 

[strafe]

Truck is at the auto body shop getting an appraisal done after some jerk backed into me so I will get you some pictures tomorrow. I did have substantial spread prior to installing and they worked great to correct the problem until they bent. They are still doing the job but what bends, breaks.

 

[Dv8tor]

What about using like the outlaw style brackets?

 

[Biggest]

I was very happy with my bed stabilizers until we took them out for a offroad beating yesterday and the gap started reappearing. The bed bolt mounts had bent up so I used a heavy duty ratchet strap to over bend the side's in with the tailgate down and left it on all night. We I removed the ratchet strap the bed sides returned to the original spread position with no change. I had the straps bending the tail end in a good two inches on each side and had them in this position for almost 10 hours with no change to the shape. I then reapplied the stabilizers and tightened them up for the drive to work and by the time I had gotten to work the gap had started widening again. There needs to be a better solution to keep the wall attachment points from bending and the bed bracket from doing the same. The product is a great idea but it needs some fine tuning.

Here is my fix. It was not intentional, however , when I installed my chase rack I lost the ability it use the bed bolts on my TMX setup. This cross bar was born out of necessity.
It has since proven to be a more robust solution.