When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Hm. Watching this develop... this came to mind: If you pin/secure the tray up, then release it, won't the weight bring it crashing down to the stops? I'd be wondering if some sort of dampener wouldn't be advisable.
'Course, that's an admittedly pansy idea for rugged men and women what understand that tray and all and know to care beful and support it when unsecuring it, but the problem is kids and idiots abound what might also get their hands on it, possibly... I should know, after all, as I am one.
Just a thought. Dunno how you'd even address that to be honest....
/Maybe I just go back to lurkin'...
//I'm stealing this, btw, when you're done and happy with it. Just wanted you to know that.
Yeah, might be a problem. But then again when it swings down with the way the hinges are I don't know how much it's going to slam so much as bind up. But when I was test fitting everything, the nylon washers give if you a decent amount of friction to help keep that from happening. Plus check the last pic I posted you should see a couple tension springs to keep it from free falling (stole the idea from the original kitchen hinges). With heavy enough springs you could conceivably skip the latches but then I'd have to make it a LOT beefier.
idea for now. I'm going to drill a hole through each of the front swing arms to mount these through, then I'll have a matching hole on the main housing for the pins to lock into. Might need a rubber grommet or nylon sleeve to keep it from rattling though.
Because I'm going to have to put a nut on each side of the swing arm to hold the pins in place (see 2nd pic), I'm going to need to use some spacers to offset the arms away from the main housing so the retaining nuts don't just hit it. In order to minimize that as much as possible I took an angle grinder to some extra nuts I had laying around so it's as thin as possible (but thick enough to still have threads).
Oh man, been a busy week. I had the week off from work so I decided to press on the install and iron out any kinks later. There were some things that were awesome (like how Ford left a nub on the firewall grommet perfect for a 4 gauge or bigger power cable) and some things that ROYALLY SUCKED (like feeding the speaker cables into the doors -- my hands are still killing me 3 days later).
For the rack itself, I used the spring pins, and tried to make everything as tight as possible. Problem is the rack is great in theory, so-so in execution (my tolerances are pretty spotty despite my best efforts). Getting the spring pins to engage is a pain in the *** but once I get them lined up they lock tight and there's no rattling.
One fitment issue I have is even though I offset the shorter arms so they could stack with the long ones, I didn't space them out enough, so there's still some interference there. They can be forced, but when I take this back apart for painting, I'm going to add some more spacers.
You can see in this one how it sticks through a hole in the bracket to lock it. I ended up beveling the pins a little bit to make them easer to end up in the hole (jokes). I had to make adjustments to the depth of the whole spring pin assembly and slotted the mounting holes so I could tweak the exact engagement.
Mounts for the car. I have heavier duty bolts in the center, and because the steel is so thin, there's enough flex that I had to add two more on each side. I epoxied the bolts in from the top, so hopefully whenever I have to remove the rack, I won't have to pull the whole rear shelf panel out again.
Not shown are a couple extra squares of Dynamat I put down the center rib to prevent any rattles.
Folded down. It'll actually fold down 90 degrees, which is perfect for making the connections in back and tweaking the settings
Here's a look at the back of it. I left a lot of slack on the power/ground cables to let it fold down all the way, now I'm second guessing that. They're pretty flexible cables but they're REALLY flexing when the thing's folder up. I tried tucking them up into the car's frame but it didn't help a whole lot. Copper work hardens too, so if I folded this up and down enough (or maybe just road vibrations), the cables could get pretty stiff.
I purposely set the arms back in the top bracket so keep the amp as out of the way in the trunk as possible (which I did, it's hard to see when it's folded up unless you crouch down), but if I ever make a V2, I'm going to revisit that.
2/28/21, 08:40 AM
