MODIFICATION: Custom Rear Hatch Ladder
GOAL:
Make accessing the roof easier.
PURPOSE:
Nothing spells overland like a rear hatch ladder. But seriously speaking, accessing the roof was a pain. Especially when I have to get up there to add/remove brackets for luggage, snowboard rack, quickfists for shovels, etc. After GOBI customer service failed me, I got my money back and took it upon myself to build a ladder. Seemed simple enough, right? There were other factors other than crappy customer service. I was always concerned w/ the location of the GOBI ladder, fitment w/ the rear wing, and more often than not, it wasn't always plumb. With a custom ladder, I could mount it however I wanted it.
MATERIALS:
1" outer diamter PVC pipes + misc fittings
1" outer diameter tube stock, 17ft.
16ga metal sheet 12"x18"
10ga metal sheet 12"x18"
Misc bolts
Weatherproof double sided tape
Weatherstripping
DURATION: 20 hours
COST: $60
HOW-TO:
Normally, I'd take a lot of pictures, but this time, not so much. Honestly, I didn't think this was going to work, since this is my first real fabrication job and it was a real learning experience. I figured if it didn't work out, I lost out on the cost of some material and labor. I just kinda went along with it and built it in place and reworked things that didn't work.
Rough Steps:
- Mockup a ladder using the PVC tubing
- Bend steel tubes to match
- Bend/Cut sheet metal to make upper and lower attachment brackets
- Weld bracket
- Drill and tap for attachment hardware
- Weld tube to sheet metal brackets
- Weld tube steps to ladder
- Paint
Here's the initial fitment:
Initally, the upper mount was a 16ga bracket bent up from the hatch edge to meet the ladder bracket. The bracket is held in place using doube sided tape and it grabbed the edge of the upper hatch door. That didn't work. As you can see in the pic, the 16ga bracket sagged with the weight of the ladder and made contact with the rear wing. The pic was taken a day after I mounted everything up and I had put my weight on it.
Additionally, I had used the cheapest PVC tubing to mock up the ladder (to keep cost down). This was a mistake. It was not stiff enough to be used as a real template. As a result, my ladder welded together was 1/2" shorter than expected since the steel tube did not flex like the PVC mock up. Instead of using 1x ABS filler spacer on the bottom mount, I had to use 2x. The spacer was built in so I could fine tune the ladder height to suit my preferences. Although I did not expect to use 1" worth of filler just to make the ladder work.
My revised mount mock-up:
I reworked the bracket so that instead of bending upward, it sits flush w/ the hatch outer mold line (OML) still grabbing the edge of the upper door. For now, I'm using threaded stand-offs to figure out how much height I need to properly secure the upper ladder. Once I'm sure that it is right, I'll cut off the existing brackets on the ladder side and weld new brackets that have an extended length downward to meet the hatch bracket on the hatch OML. Instead of a floating type mount I was previously using, the weight of the ladder will rest on the hatch. I want to make sure this time it's right because bending 10ga sheet metal by hand is not fun.
Additionally, the upper bracket is tapered towards the door edge so that the ladder could be mounted as far left as possible. The limiting structure is the rear hatch door hinge. I could have slotted the bracket, but I did not want to sacrifice its ability to hold onto the ladder and the weight.
In hindsight, I should have bent tubes downward to rest on the hatch, but I'll make due with with what I've got since I don't want to pay more money to have tubes bent. Not to mention graft on the new pieces, shape, blend them together, and refinish the whole thing again.
The lower mount is secured to the hatch using clamping method on the lower hatch door edge. The clamping force uses a welded bracket assembly plus some hardware. The lower mount is intended to keep the ladder in place and not meant to take vertical load. All the load is meant to be taken by the upper mounts.