everybody it's matt from eastwood company and welcome back to another
installment of project pilothouse the last video you may remember we worked on
building this custom bed for the truck now that's pretty much done ready to
start on the final touch of the bed the tailgate now we're going to build the
tailgate to match the styling of the rest of the bed so it's going to stay
pretty subdued and simple as you can see we cut a rough pattern at a cardboard we
traced on some lines just to give us an idea of what the final projects going to
look like now we're ready to turn this into the real thing
so let's get started we use one by one and a half inch box tubing for the frame
around to do em to being the match the top rails of the bed and two pieces of
18 gauge sheet metal that will become the outer skin of the tailgate the first
milled slots into each outer operate of the tailgate frame allowed to lift and
swing open one side shown here was key for safe then use drill bits and round
bar stock to give us our desired panel debt figuring in the material thickness
of the sheet metal skin we'd be adding
yeah
securely clamped the crossbars and outer frame uprights into the bed opening
welded the seams together using the take 200 give us the skeleton of the frame
yeah
we found that the bead rolled design of the outer skin would cause clearance
issues with the center uprights in the frame you cut the front face of them
down to a while room for the panel to protrude in on one side then welded the
uprights into the frame this gives us his skeleton we can build the hinge
assembly and skin offer market then took the tubing for the top of the tailgate
and use the mill to cut open the bottom of the tubing so the top crossbar the
tailgate frame would sink inside of the tube you can also careful use a cut-off
grinder to make the cuts like I did when we were building the front panel of the
bed
we then laid the frame and top tube on her sheet metal and draw out the wines
that we be hitting with the bead rule
yeah
we then install our new forming dies in the bead roller set the tension and die
gap and match the bedsides then carefully roll the panel following the
pattern that I've traced out early
here's a tip on hand crank bead rollers at the crank er tap the handle while
going around tight corners to help make the control turn in the beach
yeah
we then laid the first outer panel on the frame and centered it so the Preston
bead fit inside the frame
yeah
next we marked out where the hinge points would be for the tailgate and we
drilled holes in the bed upgrade supports we then made up mounting blocks
with drilled and tapped holes that would tightly fit into those uprights and tap
them down until they wind up with the holes we drilled earlier we then turned
down a set of great eight bolts use them as R pins to hinge the tailgate on we
thread them into our mounting blocks and rosette welded the blocks in place for a
strong pivot point for the tailgate we're now ready to test the function of
our hinge and latch system you first install the right side of the gate
that's key and then slide the left side in place the slots in the end of the
round tubing fit over the outside edges of the bed tightly as you drop the
tailgate down into the latched position you then lift the tailgate up to clear
the round 2 t
yeah
and then installed the outer skins onto the frame the left extra material to
fold over the edges of the frame you're describing the lines will be bending
we then put the panel and a large break and bend the sides and bottom over the
90 degrees with all the parts built and test fit together they took everything
apart and i apply 3 medium coats of self-etching primer the sides of the
pieces that would be hidden and the tailgate was finished and then
re-assembled all of the pieces and welded up the seams to make the outer
skins one piece i also added a number of short welds to connect the top tube
through the skin to keep the two from moving or warping from lifting on it
over time a small bit of seam sealer will be eventually added to this seemed
to seal it all up
just like that we have a queen sanitary looking tailgate that can almost passes
OE now the materials used to build this project were pretty darn affordable and
most of the time was spending just measuring and test fitting the parts
before we welded everything together now this tailgate was custom built just for
project pile house but you can use the same steps to build a tailgate that's
going to match your ride
the only thing we have left to do is to add some tethers to each side of the
tailgate so that it can rest when its open and we're ready to move on to the
next part of the project three more tech articles about project powerhouse make
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