Toolbox/ Tailgate Revisited

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We left on Sunday, Nov 20 for East Texas. When hooking up the RV we realized that we would hit the toolbox when turning. At the RV lot, I improvised and raised the hitch a setting (1.5″ or so) and moved the Toolbox as far back in the truck as it would go – even to the point of it sitting at an angle, and bolted it back in. This gave us a lot more room, but it still interfered on certain turns, but only to the extent that it scratched off paint and flattened the welds it scraped over.

Moving the hitch up made the trailer sit nose-high. It already was on the verge of being noticeably nose-high before, but handled nicely. With the hitch adjustment to clear the toolbox, the trailer handling was impacted. So was gas mileage – we lost about 3mpg, though part of that was probably attributable to constant 15-20mph winds the entire way home. I will not be taking another trip with the trailer nose-high like this, so the toolbox I loved so much has to either be modified or go.

I requested a couple quotes for fab work on the toolbox, but only one came back. It came back at an absurd $600. I could almost buy a new tig welder and do it myself for that. Of course, that tig welder would be less capable than the ones I really want, so I’d spend four times that to outfit my shop in the process. Something I don’t really want to do at this moment. But there is no way I’m paying $600 to have it modified. I’m returning it and they’re supposed to be picking it up on Thursday.

In the mean time, I hooked up the RV with just the fifth wheel tailgate in place and couldn’t believe how much easier it was to hook everything up (compared to a full tailgate or a toolbox being there). I’d love to find another way to keep all my tools secured in the truck without having to put something in that space. So I’m looking at various options, including some very simple ones like using a couple tool bags that I just leave in the rear floorboard of the truck and can move to the bed if needed. Not only would that be effective, it would be cheap, too.

Edit: I just ordered two of these bags for the rear floorboard.

As for the fifth wheel tailgate, the spray paint isn’t working out. It ran a little but, which I could fix with some finish sanding, but more importantly it’s scratching off even though I prepped the surface accordingly. I’m going to reprep the surface and coat it in Herculiner.

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