Headliner, antenna, dome light removal

[801Maverick801]

So much great info in this thread. Thank you so much for sharing this.

Thinking about cross bar racks on the roof... any good places up there to drill through the roof and bolt to?

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[Wilbur]

This is perfect. I plan on replacing my antenna with one from a 2022 Mustang... Any chance you can open up the Maverick antenna and take some pictures?

Here are some antenna innards.

 

[ryan2366]

This is great. I may be able to just swap the guts to the new one.

Crap different screw holes.

Thanks

 

[TxIsHome]

I plan to accomplish several things with this Dance of Removals.

First, get the antenna off so I can apply a vinyl wrap to the roof. As a portion of that process, I also want to remove the drip rails so the vinyl can be below them. The whole drip rail and its valley area seems to be a magnet for leaves and dust, so perhaps I can mitigate that once I see what it looks like under there.

Second, apply sound baffling under the ceiling and above the headliner. That was easy to accomplish, and in other trucks I have gotten about four decibels of quieter ride from roof baffling. It isn't a lot, but when combined with the back panel, the doors, the wheel wells and the firewall, applying Dynamat or Canopus turns even an inexpensive vehicle into something that feels a lot more solid and sounds less windy.

Third, run a conduit fore-and-aft to more easily snake wires for things like dash cams or whatever Future Me decides needs powered in the rear of the cab.

Finally, the edging of the headliner isn't great quality - it is just bias cut without any attempt to finish it. I think I will try to put an edge on it, such as the plastic edging you can buy as a door guard.

Since I am still waiting for my Mav, I haven’t seen the actual headliner but there is a sewing product called Fray Check you can get at Hobby Lobby or sewing stores that may help the edges of the liner.

 

[Jman79]

Awesome info. I plan on putting a rear dashcam out the brake light hole at the top of if the cab so this helps. Since the Mav already has a backup cam I want the dash cam to have view of the bed contents from rear of the cab. As well as additional blind spot sight.

Can't believe the guts in the antenna. Seems like one of those WTF moments like why the light in my fridge is $200 for the part.

 

[Wilbur]

The drip rails use a total of eight 10-mm bolts as fasteners in the roof. My impression from reading the Ford technical documents was that it was just four, two fore and two aft of the B-pillar brace. But in fact, there are four more, one on each corner as well.

Seven of the 10-mil nuts came down out of the ceiling, but one hung onto the bolt, which turned out of the rail instead.

Here is a close-up on the rail connections, with and without the bolt.

This looks like the maximum play in the rail when the bolt is removed:

There was a fair amount of dirt and leaves caught under the rails, and my truck was built less than two months ago and has sat in my garage for most of that time.

The space underneath has a void, as well as a series of depressions along the rail bed, to catch and hold dirt and dust.

 

[Wilbur]

Here is a look down the rail bed from the back of the cab, featuring the bolt that stayed in place in the back corner.

When removing the rail, the front bolts come out of the roof at a bit of an angle, and you need to work them out carefully.

Here is the location of the front bolt, inside the frame.

This is the angle the extension uses to get from the wrench up to the nut in front.

The nut is actually visible from below in the front.

The aperture for the rear nut is hidden above the side curtain airbag.

This is the angle for the wrench extension.

 

[Wilbur]

...Thinking about cross bar racks on the roof... any good places up there to drill through the roof and bolt to?

The drip rail bed has several indentations in addition to the bolt holes used to attach the rails to the roof.

I don't know anything about racks, but here is a shot of the member that connects the two B-pillars. It seems empty of critical components.

There is a stack of different metal pieces under that rail bed, so that might be useful to tap?

 

[Wilbur]

The seat belt attaches to the B-pillar with Torx bit bolts.

 

[Wilbur]

interesting in how that works out. I have the headliner poking out from the seals near both a frame posts, and am hesitant to ask for the TSB repair because they will inevitably scratch something up. TSB calls for total headliner replacement.

If adding a little of that plastic edging keeps it tucked, I can avoid that risk.

I am testing the application of 303 to the top, white-colored plastic trim that touches the headliner.

303 works well on the dark-colored plastics below that throughout the interior (and also the exterior plastics on the Maverick).

My theory is that 303 will help a little bit to reduce scratches on that plastic. The test is to see if the 303 has any negative affect on the white plastic color.

 

[Wilbur]

Awesome info. I plan on putting a rear dashcam out the brake light hole at the top of if the cab so this helps. Since the Mav already has a backup cam I want the dash cam to have view of the bed contents from rear of the cab. As well as additional blind spot sight...

I am interested to learn more about your plan to install a dash cam in the CMHSL. Do you plan to cut a hole in the fixture, or mount the camera inside the fixture?

Here are some photographs of that area and the light fixture itself.

 

[Jman79]

I am interested to learn more about your plan to install a dash cam in the CMHSL. Do you plan to cut a hole in the fixture, or mount the camera inside the fixture?

It is hard to say 100% without having my truck yet to do in person exploratory. When I do mods, I'm always super cautious about making extra holes and such so my plan revolves around making little or no permanent mods to existing pieces.

Looking at your pics I would say my starter plan(subject to modification as I go) would be.
- I plan to find a large screen dashcam to mount on the center dash above the infotainment. Likely a suction cup mount or some removable adhesive until I decide I'm happy with that location. 3M Command is good for that.
- Route the cam cord straight back to the windshield, then over to passenger pillar, up and across the exposed roof to the hole for existing CMHSL exit hole.
- I'd test to see if I could bring the camera feed straight down between the sheet metal and the light fixture and reaffix the light. Is there enough give in the weather stripping to just seal around the wire without modification?
If not, then I would ever so slightly carve a round space with my Dremel on the bottom of that light fixture to allow the cord out. Modify the light housing and not the metal frame because it's much easier to replace if screwing up.
- Most rear facing cameras have a very thin metal mount with two screw holes.

You could likely use that bracket and some bolts with large washers to clamp it on the lower side of the center hole in the body that the light assembly will cover. Most of those brackets are thin and can easily be bent to accommodate clearance out from under the light housing, flush against the body.
- Reaffix the light housing and apply a little clear silicon caulk of needed around the wire. Mostly the metal bracket should be so thin that the rubber weather strip should seal over it. Since all your exit points around that light are on the bottom this helps prevent any water egress.

My 2 cents. I've been wrong in my ideas in the past, but at least you're not modifying any major parts to do this. So it should be easily reversible.

As for the camera. I'd been eyeballing systems like this. My priority being recording capability and good size screen for full time rear view. Hopefully it can remember to stay in rear view on bit and is be happy.

 

[Wilbur]

- I'd test to see if I could bring the camera feed straight down between the sheet metal and the light fixture and reaffix the light. Is there enough give in the weather stripping to just seal around the wire without modification?

- Most rear facing cameras have a very thin metal mount with two screw holes.

You could likely use that bracket and some bolts with large washers to clamp it on the lower side of the center hole in the body that the light assembly will cover. Most of those brackets are thin and can easily be bent to accommodate clearance out from under the light housing, flush against the body.

Yes, the weather stripping around the CMHSL is flexible and soft.

I think that no matter what you plan to do with the camera, that bracket will need to be bent or adjusted to a new angle suitable for your application.

None of the obvious external mounting positions with the existing bracket configuration seemed likely to point the camera down into the bed.

 

[Jman79]

None of the obvious external mounting positions with the existing bracket configuration seemed likely to point the camera down into the bed.

This is the position I was thinking of. Hoping there would be room to move it up a tad and use small pan head bolts with washer and nutt to clamp to the bottom lip of that hole (no drill option). But the bracket may not be large enough to then reach out under the plastic light housing.

Worse case scenario you can fab a quick bracket out of available metal. I like to repurpose old PC towers just with a Dremel or hand tools. I have an aluminum scrap case that would be perfect. Here is one on my SUV where I made an extension.

Behind the plate that little metal strip goes to the plate mounting bolts.

No matter how you mount it you will always have to bend the bracket a bit for optimal viewing angle. As long as you're not doing it repeatedly you're fine.

You either move at light speed and have great delivery or you already had a similar plan and camera on hand. Can't wait to see what the view of the bed and kind spots is like on that cam! I imagine it will be like a super rear view mirror.

 

[Nw_adventure]

interesting in how that works out. I have the headliner poking out from the seals near both a frame posts, and am hesitant to ask for the TSB repair because they will inevitably scratch something up. TSB calls for total headliner replacement.

If adding a little of that plastic edging keeps it tucked, I can avoid that risk.

All ford needs to do is release a beefier+larger door seal to provide more coverage and support to hold in the newer and larger Airbags- Come on Ford -

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