I ditched the soft Truxedo cover a few weeks ago in favor of a Bakflip F1. This cover is really nice and gives me some added versatility. The fiberglass top skin is dent resistant and stays mostly cool to the touch. The panel look takes a bit of getting used to, but overall it's fit and finish is quite nice.

Here's the cover and my modified drain lines:







Part of the reason for the hard cover was that I planned on moving the bike mounts so they didn't take up bed space. Drilling holes into a new cover was a bit of a pucker factor, but it turned out well.
It's 4' long aluminum bars 1/8" thick and 2" wide that I had powder coated by a local railing company to match the cover's rails. There's obviously a bar on the topside, but there is also a bar on the underside so that the panel is sandwiched between the bars to spread the forces more evenly. All stainless hardware, with the topside hardware being painted. The mounts are from Rocky Mounts, and the D-rings at the tailgate were ordered from Bak's replacement parts. Finished it off with some adjustable bungees to keep the rear tires from walking all over the place.

The finished product is damn nice.

 

Great job on the mod and thanks for the details.

 

Wow, slick! Nice work. Cool having the bikes up there so you're not 1) taking up bed space 2) not taking up the receiver from a hitch mounted unit. If I ever cave and get a hard tonneau cover, this is happening. Thank for the idea.

 

I have a perfectly good, and rather expensive, hitch rack with trays (like a roof rack) from my days working in the local shop but it makes the truck about 4' longer. Traveling with a 23' truck is just not something I'm incredibly excited about.

What's really nice is that the top of the cover is about the same height as a bare roof on a mid-size sedan so my overall height is no worse, actually slightly better, than a roof rack on said car. I just have to be cautious of drive thru's

 

Very nice Chandler

 

Thank you Tim. Good to see ya, hope you're well!

 

Doing well, Chandler. Busy with work and baseball season is almost upon us so it's fixin to get that much busier. I have even worked a few Sunday's already this year. I was told most of our jobs might be working 7 days a week we are that busy. The Northeast Extension of the PA turnpike widening project, where I'm working now, is going to be 24/7 weather depending. The silver lining to all that is I have had a company truck since May last year, and only put 3K miles on mine since April 2014 inspection. How's things with you? Good I hope

 

Not to derail but I did get mine out last Sunday. I worked on a job that had to take a tree down that ended up they couldn't save. I got myself a nice load of pin oak logs and paid to boot






The first pic is the trunk, 44" across, we loaded on my buddies gooseneck CC Duramax. The second is the load I pulled. I wish I could have weighed it. That BriMar is over 3k empty. I think I was around my 9300 max towing.

 

I gotta ask, I'm sure the VA in RVA is Virginia. What's RVA?

 

R = Richmond.

Damn that's a load of soon to be firewood Tim. That'll burn nicely once split and seasoned.

 

Gotcha. It's about 1/2 cord, I split and stacked it yesterday since I was off with the rain. When we bought the new wood stove 3 years ago, I read a quote somewhere and truer words were never spoken- heating with firewood is not a hobby, it's a lifestyle. It takes up a helluva lot of my free time since nobody here seems concerned with helping me.. It's therapeutic actually. When I want to be alone I tell them I'm gonna cut, split or stack and everybody leaves me alone I have 10 cord split and stacked right now, and 3-4 cord in rounds I need to split. The goal is to stay 3 years ahead

Anyway back on topic, nice set-up you got yourself there sir!