DIY Tailgate Inner Panel Cover

Went to the junkyard found a K body with an aluminum tailgate skin, yanked it, trimmed 4" or so off one side, ripped the plastic crap expanding square "nuts" out of the tailgate skin and replaced them with 1/4-20 riv-nuts, reglued the inner tailgate frame to the back of the outer skin with structural 2 part apoxy adhesive, coated the mating surfaces with FIPG, drilled new holes in the diamond plate skin, affixed with stainless "sidewalk" bolts.

BAM:



Cost me like tree-fiddy.

 

I had the advantage of working for a sheet metal shop at the time. Made the longer cuts on the shear and the sides I got em on a bandsaw

 

You can cut aluminum with a carbide tipped wood cutting blade. It's messy (wear your PPE, especially safety glasses) and it's not great for the blade but it'll work fine for most home shop type work. Better still, buy a metal cutting blade; Diablo for example makes versions for circular saws, angle grinders, etc. Ex. https://www.diablotools.com/explore/saw-blades

Check your yellow pages for metal sales, especially recyclers. Recyclers can be hit or miss depending on what they have on hand but they usually sell by weight, not shape. Some of them will have shears and brakes and will do cuts and bends for you for a price. There is also a chain of stores called Metal Supermarket that may be in your area (they closed here unfortunately). The big box stores are generally way overpriced on metal.

If you're going to go steel or even if you are planning on replacing the factory piece I'd install rivnuts/nutsert/whatever you want to call them. The cheap plastic inserts that Toyota uses will strip out and not hold secure after you remove the fasteners a time or two (seeing a pattern here yet? Toyota went CHEAP on a lot of stuff).

 

This won't make it $20 but if you do decide to purchase one of our Tail Gate Reinforcement Plates be sure to use the coupon code below as it will save you some additional $$

TW10OFF: Save $10 off all Tacoma products, no min.

Relentless Fabrication
www.relentlessfabrication.com

 

I have a friend that owns her own printing shop. She created some 3/8" acrylic signs for our wedding. Perhaps she can do the same on a larger scale if I can get her the correct dimensions for a 3rd gen.

 

HDPE showed up today.

New new hardware inserts showed up too

I’ll start on it tomorrow

 

following this closely- would like to do the same with mine.

 

Ill try to keep this thread going with some info. If not, it’ll all be in my build thread for sure.

 

Done and done.











99% happy with it. The bottom edge is about 1/8” too long and it binds the slightest bit when shutting the tailgate.

I’m gonna pull it off tomorrow and rip an 1/8” off that edge then install the new screw retainers and install it for good.

I may explore the option of countersunk hardware down the sides and along the bottom.

 

Looks good OP!

 

Looks nice- you happen to have a link to the place you bought the hdpe?

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/142754668242

It’s 24”x54” I wish it was a 55”.




You can see it’s about 1/2” shorter than ideal on each side.


The next size up is 24”x48” but the extra cost wasn’t worth it to me.

eBay is the only place I’ve found with free shipping on hdpe. They have 3/8” and 1/2” as well I believe

 

Came out very nice OP!!! Love the beer holder as well!! Time to toss my ply wood and get me some HDPE !!!

Maybe i'll take out my tailgate panel and trace it!!! onto the HDPE.

 

Thanks. Cup holders are an essential part of camping.

That’s all I did. Traced it and cut out.

The only issue using the oem panel as a template is the bottom edge hangs down too far.

The tailgate won’t shut because the HDPE is a little thicker than the oem panel so I had to rip 1/2“ off that edge to make it fit. It still binds a tiny bit and I plan on ripping another 1/8” off of it it to remedy this.

So all said and down, the bottom edge will be 5/8” short than the oem panel.

You could probably cut the bottom edge with a 45* bevel and it would fit without ripping it. Or if you wanted to get fancy, you could hit the whole thing with a router.

I chose to rip it and keep the 90* edge since no other edge is beveled

 

Thanks for saving me $150 lol!! I'll just slap a mount hatch sticker on it and call it a day! LOL

 

Haha. Yeah.

The Mountain Hatch piece is nice, but not 230$ nice

 

Thinking about doing this and buying one of the kB voodoo metal lips for the top edge...

how do you feel about the 1/4 in thickness? Does it add any strength or weight to things or about the same as stock?

 

Which plastics place did you go to? I'm also in SC, seems like shipping is a killer.

 

One thing different I did with mine - lay out centers for an additional rivnut into the center of the internal cross bars. Mostly was thinking it would help avoid rattling on a rutted FS road.

 

That’s not a bad idea at all. I may explore that using sountersunk hardware if need be.

No additional strength or weight. I wouldn’t do jumping jacks on it, but standing on it was fine. It does flex a tiny tiny little bit.

You could use thicker HDPE but you’d have to router the edges down to 1/4” where it meets the edge of the bed similar to how the Mountain Hatch is. Or cut a smaller piece of HDPE so it doesn’t quite extend out as far, but you’d lose the oem mounting holes.