AluCab Contour on 4G?

Oh, I guess I should throw up at least one photo up now that it's all bolted down correctly now.



I still need to do the wiring... the tail light and interior lights are fairly straight forward. I got the ggoffroad kit to relocate the cameras and I've already removed them and routed the wires to under the rear seat. But since I plan on doing electronic locks, I need to locate/splice the door lock wires. Then I can route everything into the bed at once.

Only gripe I have is the door seals want to catch on the sides of the canopy and it makes it annoying to close the doors. Not sure if that is normal or I need to have a few friends pull on the rear corners and re-tighten things down?

 

Looks great! Are you talking about the side openings? Mine open and close pretty easily. The back hatch/door has two rubber gaskets, one on the inside and the other on the outside, that makes closing it kinda wonky, but it's waterproof. Pretty satisfied with it so far.

 

All 3 doors have gaskets and all three gaskets rub on the sides/frame of the canopy to some degree just before closing, but the rear door is by far the worst and requires me to push down on one corner and then the other. Basically there's enough flex in the doors that pushing on the corner lets the gasket get by without a lot of force.

I know some people have reported the power tailgate doesn't want to close without trimming the gasket near the corners, but I've not had that issue. I setup the shims on the 6 brackets so I'm using the most shims and still get a seal (no light being seen between the canopy and bed). Instructions say they want the weight of the canopy on the brackets.

Honestly, it's not the end of the world by any means. We got some intermittent hard rain right after I installed and no leaks. I guess the real test will be when I'm driving though.

Oh if anyone else does their own install: one thing that was a little annoying is the foam gasket they have you install was clearly kept in a S.A. warehouse for a bit and the paper backing on the adhesive dried out and was difficult to remove without tearing the paper. Having a heat gun to warm things up (not too much of course!) helps a lot.

 

Same with me on my new contour for the rear. One side of the rear door closes and seats perfect, other corner requires some manipulation. I'll monitor as the seal breaks in.

Overall the fit and finish of the canpoy is very high (outside of all the silver bolts on the outside).

 

Other than the stainless steel bolts for the mounting hardware, I couldn't agree more. I should mention that the 8.8 carriage bolts from McMaster dropped right in without any filing. The specsheet said they were 8.56mm square, but they all measured 8.00mm like the originals.



Flex in aluminum in normal and I'll take a bit too tight over too loose any day. In a perfect world, the wiring would be plug & play, but that's far from industry standard so I get. I guess the next thing I need to decide is do I drill a hole in the bed, the compressor tools door or ???? to run the wires. Already decided I'm going to run a 10ga wire off the battery into the bed and mount a blue sea fuse box up in the corner. I suppose I could just use the rear AUX pigtail right behind the bumper, but can't imagine a situation where I'd want to turn off the power to the latches.

The stainless steel bolts for the side fillers is fine by me. Black oxide will rust being exposed like that. You might be able to find some aluminum or more likely titanium bolts that are anodized black if that's what you're looking for.

 

Cameras are installed and wiring for power & door locks from the cab is done!

Ended up 3D printing a longer arm for the rear view camera since the one supplied by GG Offroad was only about 6" long and some cable mounts for the T-slots on the canopy. The new camera arm is 10.5" inches and places the camera closer to the window so I can keep it higher without tilting down and getting an eye full of the cap.




Currently designing some mounts for the relay box, some relays, a central switch for lights (on or tied into the door lights) and perhaps an amp/voltage meter to keep an eye on the battery. The LED lights that Alu-Cab provides eat 600mA when all 3 lights are on high.

 

That looks awesome. Nice job with the the camera relocation too. I’ll be interested to see how you wire the latches in too - interested in doing both of these but trying to decide whether I’m capable enough to tackle the job.

do you by chance have a vertical measurement for the open rear door? Trying to see how much more vertical space there is in this gen than previously.

 

Enjoying my contour. Latches and seals are breaking in which is making it easier to close.
I want to add an attic net to the top utilizing the T Slot.

@synfinatic what bolts did use in the tslot? Mounting looks good.

 

@Vanhuette : I measure it to be 34-3/4" from the bed (I have the spray in bed liner) to the lowest point of the Countor which isn't the door, but rather the lower mating surface for the seal. Yours may be 1/4" higher or lower depending on the shim stack you end up with.

As for the locks, from the research I've done (I've another thread here in the 4G forum) the wiring shouldn't be too bad assuming you have some wiring experience and know how to use a multi-meter. Honestly, the hardest part is taking apart the cab to get access to the wires in the B pillar and remembering I need to press the unlock button twice on the remote for the wire to go "hot". Once I have things working, I'll post more about what and how I did it so others can hopefully do the same. I will say I'm glad I did this wiring at the same time as the cameras, because it's a huge PITA trying to run things out the cab and into the bed.

@Rocky.Mtn : I'm using the included SS M8-20mm bolts with came with the Countor mounting kit, because I replaced them with stronger grade 8.8 bolts like this: https://www.mcmaster.com/catalog/131/3594/91280A530 FWIW, 8-18 stainless is a few bucks more expensive and more corrosion resistant, but either will work fine IMHO for this application.

FWIW, Unlike reports I've read in the past where there is a lot of extra powder coat material in the tslots, I've had no issues inserting and moving the M8 bolts into position in my cap.

Anyways, I did receive the Canopy Locks kit from Australia (and thankfully I didn't have to pay a tariff!) and the little motors are smaller than I imagined. Have to admit I'm not a big fan of bullet connectors and it's annoying that my warranty is void if I replace them with something better, but not a deal breaker. I splurged for a proper metric drill bit kit rather than picking the closest imperial bit. Been iterating in Autodesk Fusion to design all the brackets I'm 3d printing to mount the relays, fuse box, battery monitor and switch for the lights up into the upper corner near the door. Assuming I can finish the design and get my brackets printed, I hope to do the install this weekend.

 

thanks @synfinatic

edit: I’m thinking of wiring the latches to the power tailgate lock, as that seems to make sense from a key fob standpoint as well as should hopefully make the wiring a little easier

 

I have the power tail gate and honestly wasn't sure if the lock was separate from the power open/close feature. To be honest, I didn't bother checking either. With the lip on the rear Countor door, you don't want to open the tailgate before you open the rear door. Since I was running wires for the cameras anyways, it was pretty easy to pull it from the passenger rear door once I confirmed the right wires. Either way, 3M scotchlok splice connectors make it super easy to splice things together.

It's definitely best practice to use a pair of relays to drive the locks... but you'd probably be fine TBH driving it right off the tailgate lock. The Canopy Locks are only 1.2A, but some of the other electronic lock options are like 10A and you'll definitely need relays. If you're okay with using the AUX pigtail behind the bumper you can use that 15A circuit to drive the locks if you don't want to run power from the battery like I did. But I'm going overkill because that's how I roll.

 

Ahh, Canadian here … no power up/down tailgate for us unless you get the hybrid. I think the tailgate LOCKS with the key fob on a sport premium … although now I’m not so sure… but I thought that might be an easier place to run the wiring from

 

Guess I should of actually read the instructions... would of saved me a lot of time today. But got all the wiring done except between the relays and the canopy locks. Pretty happy with how it all turned out. The switches to control the lights and turn on the amp/volt meter are easy to reach and being up in the corner makes it easy to read even in strong sun light.

The switch on the right lets me setup the Countor lights to be on, off, or controlled by the door lights.

Switch on the left turns on the display for the volt/amp meter. Pulls about 10mA which is fine for while on trips, but since I'm still WFH I don't get a chance to drive the truck every day and no point adding another ~15% to the total parasitic draw.

Next up I guess is do the locks. Still need to plan how I want to write them up and I really hate making wiring harnesses, but not much choice.

 

Got the Canopy Locks physically mounted today. Instructions were fairly good and using a drill press is highly recommended to get all the holes drilled square which is fairly important. Definitely suggest reading each step completely before trying to do the step.

One thing I would definitely change in the instructions is mount/install the protection bracket on the lock backer BEFORE YOU INSTALL THE LOCK in the door. Trying to screw the "self-tapping screws" with a screw driver against the door panel is a huge PITA- especially for the the screw nearest to the shock. Doing it off the door, means you can also drill a pilot hole for each self-tapping screw which makes it much easier. Not sure why the instructions tell you to install the protection bracket while installed... I had no issues sliding the little motors to lock/unlock in between the lock body and the bracket and then screwing them in later.

They included some brackets to move two of the gas struts to clear the locks in the kit for the Countor, but I didn't need them- everything clears as is.

Anyways, decided to use some bus bars to make it easier to wire the 6 locks to the relays, so taking some time to design & 3d print the appropriate mounts. Will have to finish the wiring another day.

 

3D printed the bracket for the bus bars for the 6 latches and got everything wired up. I designed and printed the mounts for the T slots as well. Wish I could come up with a better solution than 3M wire management stickers for a few other places, but one downside of aluminum is that you can't use magnets like with the RSI.

 

Proof of life:

 

Set that to loop everyone. ASMR.

 

One thing I just checked, because it wasn't mentioned anywhere on the canopy locks website was that the electronic lock is completely independent of the key locks. That means that if your battery is dead and the canopy was locked with the fob/electric locks, you can't unlock them with just the key. And if you lock the cap with the key, you need the key to unlock it as well.

I suppose the nice thing is if you have a reason to let someone drive the truck, it's fairly easy to keep them out of the bed or vice-versa. Just don't keep your jumper cables or whatever in the bed, because you might not be able to get to them... assuming you install the electronic latches on all 6 like I did at least. Considering the lack of room under/behind the rear seat in the hybrid model, kinda annoying.

 

The level of dedication to electric locks here is fascinating. Definitely was not on my bingo card for an AluCab install.

 

Anyway…

… I take delivery on the 30th. All my bed prep is done (Decked slide, Mountain Hatch, OEM Molle panels, camera relocation kit).

Stoked.