Quote:
Originally Posted by ijames
Hi Bow, I'm a newbie here but I was wondering about bed toolboxes and whether putting one at the rear instead of the front would make it act like a partial tonneau cover. No one here seemed to have ever heard of anyone trying that, with data. Do you still have your toolbox? If so, since your partial tonneau cover is already off, it would be a fairly easy experiment (hint, hint :-) :-)). Yes, there are drawbacks, a heavy load in the box raises the polar moment of inertia, you lose cargo access from the rear unless you move the box, and things in the box will get shaken up more than at the front. However, given how many pickup trucks I see with toolboxes and empty beds that never see cargo, it seemed like a good idea to test. I have the pickup but no box. Anyway, if you feel like doing a little testing I think that that would be great. Thanks.
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Howdy James,
My Tool Box isn't the standard "across the top of the bed style, it sits down in the bed and is quite a bit smaller than the standrd bed box. Probaly 4' wide, 2.5' tall, and 2.5' deep., and it sits about 6" lower than the bed sides.
It has been mounted in the same spot for....12 years, so no, I'm not going to relocate it....
not to mention my 9' stainless steel whip antenna is mounted to it...
The partial bed cover I made was flush with the top of the bed sides, and came forward from the tailgate about 4'. It worked like a champ, until the mounts I use to atach it to the sides of the bed rail failed.
My Frontier 2.4L Inline 4, 5 speed, single cab with a 6' bed always had a very noticable drag while accelerating from 35-50 mph (when entering a highway, etc), after the partial cover and the cab extension wing, that was gone. I always chalked it up to the cover allowing the air ro flow over the bed instead of the air swirling in the bed. either way, it worked very well and was worth the time/effort/few $$ I had into it...