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Today's pickups have faux spoilers on the gate,hoping that drivers will be reminded to put the gate up
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I suspect it makes for a stronger tailgate too.
I have a 2013 Ram 1500 with a "rambox". This is a good news bad news thing. The bad news is that it seriously limits what you can do in the way of a cap, if not eliminating it entirely. The good news is that it is hugely useful and leaves the bed nice and square, along with adding extras like movable hookup points on a rail. The rail made my half-tonneau easy as I just slide the tonneau in the rail from the back. When I need it out of there I can pull it out and flip it over and throw it in the bed, where it takes little room.
I was just thinking of the half-tonneau + wing combo. I've been reading a lot of these threads and not yet seen something like I am about to describe.
Seems to me with that vortex spinning in the back, anything that will smooth the path and encourage the rotation would help, which may be why the wing helps. But can't we do better? The space is a square one and the vortex is cylindrical. Maybe creating a cylindrical area between the half-tonneau and the rear cab window, including the bottom surface of the wing, would make that rotation cleaner. For example, hanging some flashing material from the front edge of the half-tonneau and from the front of the bed, leaves you with a half-cylinder. If it is flexible like heavy plastic it would not get in the way any worse than not having one, if you have to take the half-tonneau down for cargo. Likewise the bottom part of the wing could continue the cylindrical contour. Ideally you'd end up with 3/4 of a cylinder for the vortex to rotate in.
If this is the way to go, I first need to shorten my half-tonneau a bit to give larger area for this rotation. The open part of the bed is now smaller than the height of the cab above the bed.
The width of the wing should be just the bed width I think, in my case 52 inches (inside the ram box).
It's a little hard on the front of the bed to smooth things out because the window is offset forward from the bed interior a few inches It makes me think the entire wing section should be built on the front of the bed, rather than mounted to the cab. A small port in the cylindrical section, with an acrylic panel, should give rear visibility. Or if acrylic can be bent into that curve the entire surface above the bed could be acrylic. I think this can be done with heat; some guys make fairings for their motorcycles this way.
Has anyone around here tried to give that vortex a nice cylindrical space to rotate in, as I describe?