Stromberg Carlson 100 Series 5th Wheel Tailgate - Open Design - Toyota

Video Transcript for Stromberg Carlson 100 Series 5th Wheel Tailgate Review

Hey guys. Today we're going to take a look at the Stromberg Carlson 100 Series 5th Wheel Tailgate. Now this is going to be a direct replacement for your factory tailgate for most of your late eighties to early nineties Ford model trucks. Now this is a vented tailgate so it's going to give you better vision for when you're driving or backing up, and it's also going to improve your gas mileage. While this cutout is also going to be good for loading any 5th wheel or gooseneck trailers so you won't have to lower the tailgate to get those loaded.Now if you got to tailgate that's broken or damaged or you just don't want to mess with it anymore, a lot of times with these older trucks they'll just be very outdated and just very weathered down. So you can see this one is, it's very hard to pull that handle up to get it open, so it'd be good idea to replace it.

But if you don't want to spend the time or the money to try to find an exact replacement for the tailgate, the Stromberg Carlson is going to do a great job to replace it.It has a heavy duty steel tube construction, which is going to be very durable and have a 100 pound weight capacity and has a black powder coat finish which can be painted to match the surface of your vehicle. And that's what actually Stromberg Carlson recommends to complete the rust resistance. This is going to be custom fit tailgate, so it's going to match the contours of your truck bed. It uses two of these latches to secure to your tailgate while also utilizing the factory pin that your old factory tailgate attached to first. So we just got to pull in on the pins, close it, and the pins are going to lock behind those pins so that you can't unlock it.Now that we've gone over some of those features, let's show you how to install.

And before we install our tailgate there's a bit of pre-assembly we have to do. It doesn't take too much time at all. We already have one side done. Next side we'll just do real quick. First things first.

We're going to take this pin out. We just push in on the sides like so. Pull the pin out. We're not going to need that. Going to take this ring, key ring, and slide that around into the slot.

That's going to be basically your handle. There we go. Just like that. And we're to take this rubber grommet and we're going to put it on the inside of the bracket, face down. We want it to wrap around. Now it is advised to use a type of adhesive so that it stays in place, but for demonstration purposes, we're going to skip that step.Now we can get it in place on our tailgate. You want to make sure that the latch right here is on the outside of this bracket right there. It's going to slide into place just like that. Now we'll take our included hardware. We're going to make sure that the heads of the bolts are on the outside. We'll thread one of our nuts on there. Do the same for the other one. Now you will notice that when it's not tightened down, you do have a lot of adjustability right here. You want to tighten it down so that the latch is level with this rail right here. So just get a flat head screwdriver and then a wrench and then you can tighten that down.Now we're going to remove the factory tailgate. What we need to do first is open it up. Bring it down and we need to get these cables unattached from the truck bed. And how are we going to do that is a tab right here, we're just gonna push in on it and push up just like that. And then do the same for the other side. Now we have both cables and removed and hat we're going to do is pull it off of the passenger side like so, and then the driver's side. And then we can set it aside.Now we can grab our Stromberg Carlson and put it in place. We're going to put that tube on the driver's side first, like so, and then we can get the passenger's side on. So lift up, push it to close it. You may have to pull on the pins just to get her to close for the first time, just so we can adjust. I see over here on our driver's side, our latch is pretty tight. We're not going to mess with that at all. But if you come over to our passenger side, we're going to see that we got a lot of wiggle room, so we're just going to make a few adjustments to our latch and then try it again. So we're going to open it up first, pull both ends and open up the tailgate. And what we're going to do is we're going to hold up with our knee and we're going to come down to the bolt and the nut that we have on the latch system, loosen those up and then push it down towards this base part right here. Let's go ahead and do that.Now we've made that adjustment. Let's go ahead and shut our tailgate. Remember you've got to pull on the pins to get to tailgate to shut. Now you see we did take out a lot of that rattling just by making that minor adjustment. Now at that point, your installation's going to be complete. However if you want to go a step further and attach your factory cables, you can do that as well. Just keep in mind that the hardware is not included, but you can just kind of go around to the shop and maybe find a couple of scrap parts. We just have a basic, a nut and bolt, and then we have a washer around it as well. You cannot use the same hardware that was holding it to the factory tailgate because it was just one screw holding it into the side without a bolt. And another thing you want to keep in mind is this is not a weight bearing tailgate, so I would avoid standing or sitting on it or setting anything dense and heavy on top of it while it's lowered.That's going to do it for our look at the Stromberg Carlson 100 Series 5th Wheel Tailgate.