Building a New Series Tailgate
Last season was pretty hard on the Lightweight's tailgate. Since I hang my spare on the tailgate, everyone figure it is safe to give my truck a bump on the trails. In most cases that was true until the last bump. After that, the tire carrier rattled to no end (yes, I could even hear it over the engine and all the other rattles).
I knew that I was going to need to rebuild the tailgate after looking at it. Many times in the past, when the carrier rattled, I just tighted up the bolts some more and it was good to go. Not this time. The tailgate on a lightweight is actually two pieces. You can split these to have a tall or a short tailgate. After looking at it, I could definately see a huge bow in the two pieces. I had thought about just taking a piece of diamond plate and attaching it to the back and tightening it down to straighten it out. Seemed like a good plan at the time.
I went down to Bill's shop since he has all the metal working equipment. I also needed to build a new ramp for my trailer (lost it in transit somewhere) and switch my fuel pump to an electric one (had to make a plate to cover the hole where the mechanical pump is bolted on to). Since I had enough jobs involving metal, it was time to take a trip to SC.
When I got there, Bill was having plumbing issues. It seems that a drain had plugged up outside the shop and when diggging it out, he also broke the sewer and fresh water line. While he was out there digging, I started on the ramp for the trailer. Pretty easy job since I had another to use as a template. While he was digging, I was cutting and welding. After I finished that, he was ready to go to Lowes and pick up some plumbing parts and eat lunch (yes, this delay us a while).
When we got back, I started painting the ramp and was helping him trying to get the drain free. Once we got all that fixed, we went inside to work on the tailgate and fuel pump. We decided that rebuilding the entire tailgate would be a better option (and stronger too). It is a simple design, two pieces of diamand plate and six pieces of 3/4" square tube. After cutting all the metal to fit, the welding began.
We welded the pieces together to form the rectangle. The diamond plate pieces are different sizes due to a lip that needed to be created so teh tailgate would catch on the truck. Here is the tailgate after welding the outer plate to the tube frame.
All that is left to do is weld on the other plate and grind it all smooth. This was quite time consuming but the end result was worth it. Meanwhile while doing this, we were also working on the fuel pump which got installed and works quite nicely. Here is the end result for the tailgate. You may notice the six holes for the tire carrier. These were drilled through the middle supports for added stablilty.
We fit the tailgate and it worked beautifully. Perfect fit. Now the finish work needs to be complete. First up is an acid bath in Muriatic acid to take off as much rust as possible. Wear a mask and gloves as this can burn. You can find this acid at Lowes in the pool department. I just poured it all over the tailgate and waited for it to quit sizzling and smoking. Once that stoped, I scrubbed with a bruch and water to clean it all off. I did this twice and it was fairly clean (the rust was pretty bad on the diamond plate we used).
Now I let it dry in the sun for a few hours. Since there was still some rust on the metal, I coated the entire surface with Rust Seal. When put on rust, it seals and prevents it from rusting. It also turns black when it finds rust. After it dried, it looked much better.
I let it dry overnight. The next day I started painting. The colors are close but not perfect. Here is the final result after painting.
After it dried, I put the tire carrier back on. It is bolted solid - no more rattles. I put it back on the truck and installed the spare tire. Here are the final photos (and yes, the pink bike is mine).
In summary, it turned out better than I thought. Yes, I added a few more pounds to the truck (about 50) but it can now take a hit. In fact, if I were to roll this truck over a mountain, only the rollbar, bumper, and tailgate will be identifiable. Thanks again to Bill for both his help in design and assembly and also the use of his shop.