Originally Posted by drogers

I've been lurking here for many moons, and admiring all of your amazing projects. The first one I thought I'd tackle and share is my take on the cargo covers. I wanted a neat and clean look, so following many of the threads on these gave me direction there (outdoor carpet, fitting around rollbars, etc). I have a soft top, so I just used the hardtop deck rails for mounting - soft top goes right over it no problem - and I absolutely wanted the deck lid hinged.

The hinge requirement created a bit problem for me, since I also wanted it 'lockable' for obvious reasons. After many hours of thought, testing, and wandering the aisles at lowes, I came upon a solution, so I bought my parts and got started.

I cut the deck in 4 parts out of 5/8ths plywood. *There's a main panel, which goes against the rear seats, the soon-to-be-hinged panel, and 2 'filler' pieces for the corners. *It's a little hard to tell in this pic, but I attached two pieces of 3/4" square aluminum tubing to the main deck to support the hinged and corner panels. *You can make out the line of self tapping screws I used to anchor it, and the hinged panel is resting on the tubing in the pic.



I drilled holes through the main and corner panels that line up with the existing hard-top mounting holes, and test-fitted everything several times before gluing the carpet on. The carpet was cut from an $18 roll of outdoor carpeting from lowes - I was very happy with the color and look of it!

Here you can see how the deck is attached - I used eye-bolts with large washers and nuts on both the top and bottom side. As you can see, the eye bolts make great tie-down points.



Ahh, I haven't finished gluing the carpet around the rear lip of the deck yet, since I'm debating adding a little lip that will go under the rear-window crossbar and butt up against the door. There's only a small gap there now, but *I know* it's there, so it bugs...






You can see that with the hinged panel back there is a lot more access to the back for getting groceries and junk in and out. *Oh yeah, it *just* clears my 37L ARB fridge if I take the 'secret compartment' cover out. *You can also see the aluminum tubing here that supports the decklid when it's closed.




Now for the locking trick. You see the eye bolt sticking up from the hinged panel in the pic above? I put a threaded collar in the panel and screwed the eyebolt in to that, with a nut on it to 'lock' it in place.



Eye bolt, meet gate pin.



This is a pin from a $5 gate latch set - I threw out the latch because I only wanted the pin. I used a persuader (32oz hammer) to get the right angle on it, and attached it to the tailgate with self tapping screws. Ahh, important note - do this part before drilling out the hole for the eye bolt to go in, or you'll have a heck of a time lining things up.

When the gate is closed, the pin anchors the hinged panel down with the eye-bolt, and voila! locking deck lid.



Here you can see the piano hinge I used. I installed it before carpeting, and overlapped the 2 panels of carpet over it when gluing them on (glued right up to the hinge, but not on the part with the pin). Once the glue dried, I ran the carpet knife down each side of the hinge to take off the excess and it came out looking pretty good.




As for strength, that's a pair of 60lb firewalls sitting on it in the first pic, so I imagine it'll hold up to most things I'd care to put up there.