Tailgate not level with bed.

[999]

I love em. We spend time in Mexico and Ecuador and I love ALL the wacky little pickups, and some bigger ones, that we can't get here.

I got a cool car for you, research : Volkswagen Saveiro, Fiat Strada or Fiat Toro. The VW is my dream, please come to the US lol

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[Dbarr]

As the title suggests, the cables are too long and the tailgate is not level with the bed. It is also not level with the wheel wells when in the half-up position.

People have pointed this out before reacting to pictures and I assumed it was optical illusion but my Sola don't lie.

I am confident they did their level best… then again, 6/23 and still no build date

 

[GaMaverick]

Noticed that in my Lariat one day when I sat on the tailgate it feels like it slants a little.

 

[Rob Cactus Gray]

Anytime a company outsources its products to countries with inferior quality standards and practices, this is usually the result. Why is anyone surprised?

Ford owns the factory in Hermosillo and has the final approval on all products. The bronco top fiasco was outsourced all the way to a Michigan facility with Webasto (German company). The tops looks terrible in all video reviews. Ford can shift blame all they want but it ultimately falls on them.

I’m starting to question my decision to buy a Maverick. I mean Ford drilled a hole in the fuel tank installing a spray in bed liner! How do you even do that? I’m sure the tank was empty so it wasn’t apparent. Perhaps a robot drilled 1/8th inch to far (so many jokes). We have seen a huge lack of oversight on the production of these trucks so far. The process hopefully gets locked down before I get mine.

 

[DryHeat]

Anytime a company outsources its products to countries with inferior quality standards and practices, this is usually the result. Why is anyone surprised?

I know what you mean. My Jeep was made in Illinois and I've had several quality issues over the years.

I've tried calling the plant to complain, but I don't speak Ilinoiyan and no one will talk to me.

We have seen a huge lack of oversight on the production of these trucks so far.

I wonder if Maverick production is any worse than any other new vehicle, or if it's just that people are paying more attention and talking about it more because of the build-to-order process.

 

[Geep]

Easy fix…..chain

 

[ITSATRUCK]

The secret in automotive. If your going to have a defect better on every single vehicle then just a few. . . . Bill the cable for the tail gate is to long, what every truck, just ship them all.

 

[Swami37]

As the title suggests, the cables are too long and the tailgate is not level with the bed. It is also not level with the wheel wells when in the half-up position.

People have pointed this out before reacting to pictures and I assumed it was optical illusion but my Sola don't lie.

Oh no. You better cancel your order.

 

[Delzona]

I bet either the designer screwed up cable length or the manufacture of cable did. I bet someone interpreted the cable dimension wrong. They included something in the assembly thinking it was cable measurement. Just a guess.

I wouldn't be surprised if the original cable length was done in imperial measurements, but the manufacturer uses metric measurements! If I remember correctly there was a NASA mission that got screwed up because of this very problem!

 

[clavicus]

500lbs middle position according to manual.

This exactly. I can't remember the last time I bought a sheet of plywood, siding, etc. that wasn't warped or bent/twisted a little right off the stack at my local home improvement store. Most the wood is bundled wet these days and if you let it sit any length of time on-site it gets worse and worse with temperature and atmospheric changes.

FWIW: I seem to recall reading here many months ago (before any retail trucks delivered) in a topic involving the unique Flex bed design considerations that the slight offset is done intentionally by Ford. This was many months + thousands of posts ago- so I wouldn't know where to begin looking for it. I do not frequent any other Maverick forums or message boards, so I know I read it here. Could of been in a Ford issued informational posted here by Admins or an article published elsewhere and posted here- can't remember that specific detail. I didn't think anything of it at the time as it was a tiny detail in the massive amounts of Maverick information flooding the interwebs. Maybe someone with better search skills and more time and patience can validate or disprove my memory. I could always be wrong on any topic

I have a suspicion the manual has a typo, because it doesn’t list both fully down and lifted load amounts.

You may be thinking of the thread about one cord being taut, and the other loose a little by design; this is to allow slack in one so that it can be more easily pulled off the lowest position I believe. Although I don’t really see the sense in that since you still have to lift the gate to get it to it’s upper position.

 

[Chris_G]

Oh no. You better cancel your order.

It's the only reasonable decision!

 

[joeh]

Not sure which is right or wrong in this discussion, but one of the first Maverick videos I watched was from a Ford Customer Communications Manager showing the bed and tailgate. He uses terms such as "flat", "level", "aligns with wheel well" when describing the tailgate position which tells me it should line up.

 

[kw86er]

I have a suspicion the manual has a typo, because it doesn’t list both fully down and lifted load amounts.

You may be thinking of the thread about one cord being taut, and the other loose a little by design; this is to allow slack in one so that it can be more easily pulled off the lowest position I believe. Although I don’t really see the sense in that since you still have to lift the gate to get it to it’s upper position.

If you have a balanced load at 500 lbs rating it will carry its share of the load in the lower position with a 1500lb +/- payload but as soon as you put it in the middle it has to carry more of the load with calculations needing to be made for the angle and the amount of load hanging over the edge.

I had to contemplate this the other day. I loaded 30 2x6 10'. The math sais they weighed about 475lbs. I was like "ok how do I know how much of the load is on the tailgate in the middle position." I decided I will make a cross support that planes out with the tailgate at that angle, if that makes any sense, to share more of the load and then I could at least double the amount to carry 60 2x6 10'. Once you get a visual idea of what it will haul, in a certain material (spruce in this case) it's easy to guess. Note that rating are usually a fraction of the actual failure point as well.

 

[rclee]

Maybe we will all get two tailgate cables with our FITS goodies!

At least you have a Maverick to pick it's nits on.

 

[FabMav]

I will probably replace the stock aircraft cable with metal bars with a hinged pivot points in the middle.

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