Re: Carryall Question.


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Posted by Keith in Washington on Monday, March 27, 2006 at 3:34PM :

In Reply to: Re: Carryall Question. posted by Chris Davis - UT on Monday, March 27, 2006 at 2:43PM :

Chris:

Intereasting. I have flexed the body of my carryall offroad many times and have taken it over a lot of washboard roads and never have had the upper or lower tailgate "pop" loose or open. I have seen "scars" in the paint on the body where the alignment pads on the lower tailgate have hit the body. My problem is more in the area of getting the tailgates open. I have to turn the handle all the way and the upper tailgate will pop open just a little. Same with the lower one. To get the lower one closed I have to turn the handle all the way and push hard to compress the rubber. I can not just shut it and expect the latches to "Click" past each other and latch. That is probabily why it does not rattle as the rubber seals are compressed.

I did do a lot of rewelding of my body as every corner in the body was cracked. No corner in a door, tailgate or whindshield was not broken. There were either broken welds or cracks radiating from everyone. The door post were not even attached to the floor. It was really a rattle trap when I got it. It had been well used(the speedo showed 99K and the previous owner said it had always been disconnected even when he bought it). I did quite a bit of welding around the tailgate which was really bad. the lower corners have a corner brace piece of metal that is inside of the exposed side and bottom metal of the door frame. I used a spot weld remover to cut holes in the outer pieces which allowed me to reweld these pieces to the inner support brace. Lucky for me that the brace was not broken but the side and bottom pieces had broken loose of the brace.

I have found that if you take the time and fix broken welds and repair the latches these are fairly decent and quiet bodies. Their downfall (for the body) is the flexible frame under them. The frames were designed to flex rather than have the axles articulate like in more modern trucks. I fully expect the carryall to split again with time. Especially in the tailgate area.



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