BuildStuff
Newbie
Lol, you broke the forum. On a separate note, I think I nailed it, well about 95% nailed it, which really means good enough. If I stand 11 feet back, stoop over so my eyes are at about 36 inches off the ground, I start to get a glimpse of the tire. Before I didn't have to be that far back and not stoop over that much before I could see it, as a bonus, I have a sway bar back there that is black as well as the obvious rear end that is also black, this in turn 'hides' the black spare tire, more like deflects the vision of it a little bit as said spare tire doesn't hang into either of these now to where it distorts the shape of either the sway bar or rear end, so what that does is trick the eye into thinking it is more 'mechanical stuff' down there and not so much a tire hanging down. In retrospect, I would have to say I would do this again if one is into aesthetics.
I see this topic has some views, so I want to give a QOL ( herein means Quality of Life ) modification for those 'lurkers' (lol). I mentioned earlier I had done a fair amount of work to my tailgate (modification, not repair) when I got the truck the tailgate squeaked when I open/closed it, likely due to some rust and the hinge being metal to metal contact. After I had the tailgate painted, I inserted a 'wear surface' in between the male/female parts of the hinge. This is Super easy to do as the nature of the ease of removing/installing said tailgate requires a fair amount of 'slop' in the hinge, if it weren't there it might be harder to remove/install the tailgate, so what I did was find a thin, tough piece of plastic, some contact cement (maybe not the best choice of adhesive, but no issues as of yet), and cemented the plastic as a wear surface between the hinge parts. As far as the thickness of the plastic goes, I guessed, I ended up using the toughest plastic In had on hand, a Vitamin Water bottle, fit it into the right shape, cemented it in, a little bit of grease, poof, smooth as butter, literally zero noise. It doesn't take long to boot.
Edit: I forgot 2 items, first, that particular plastic thickness had no effect on removing or installing the tailgate, to me it is just as easy, but the trick to this is not having an 'edge' on the plastic for the hinge to catch on when installing, to aid this I used the bottom part of the plastic bottle, as the bottle isn't really a cylinder but conicalish at the bottom, kind of like the hinge on the truck, so in the end you just have to match the shape of the inside of the 'female' part of the hinge ( I'm calling it the tailgate part) to minimize the plastic interferring. If you do this, wire brush/sand all the rust out of the inside of the hinge parts, paint it with a good quality smooth paint, Let It Dry for a good long time, like a week or so, Then proceed with the mod, enjoy your noise free tailgate.
I see this topic has some views, so I want to give a QOL ( herein means Quality of Life ) modification for those 'lurkers' (lol). I mentioned earlier I had done a fair amount of work to my tailgate (modification, not repair) when I got the truck the tailgate squeaked when I open/closed it, likely due to some rust and the hinge being metal to metal contact. After I had the tailgate painted, I inserted a 'wear surface' in between the male/female parts of the hinge. This is Super easy to do as the nature of the ease of removing/installing said tailgate requires a fair amount of 'slop' in the hinge, if it weren't there it might be harder to remove/install the tailgate, so what I did was find a thin, tough piece of plastic, some contact cement (maybe not the best choice of adhesive, but no issues as of yet), and cemented the plastic as a wear surface between the hinge parts. As far as the thickness of the plastic goes, I guessed, I ended up using the toughest plastic In had on hand, a Vitamin Water bottle, fit it into the right shape, cemented it in, a little bit of grease, poof, smooth as butter, literally zero noise. It doesn't take long to boot.
Edit: I forgot 2 items, first, that particular plastic thickness had no effect on removing or installing the tailgate, to me it is just as easy, but the trick to this is not having an 'edge' on the plastic for the hinge to catch on when installing, to aid this I used the bottom part of the plastic bottle, as the bottle isn't really a cylinder but conicalish at the bottom, kind of like the hinge on the truck, so in the end you just have to match the shape of the inside of the 'female' part of the hinge ( I'm calling it the tailgate part) to minimize the plastic interferring. If you do this, wire brush/sand all the rust out of the inside of the hinge parts, paint it with a good quality smooth paint, Let It Dry for a good long time, like a week or so, Then proceed with the mod, enjoy your noise free tailgate.
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