You might be able to find pick n' pluck foam from the Pelican Case Company if you can get the right size and depth or double them up.
Apologies if text to speech makes reading my post tricky. Eyes don’t work.
That’s my setup in the photo.
First, let me just say this is a fantastic mod that I’m extremely happy with. But to do the internals as above does take some effort.
Re pick and pluck...
The challenge with Pickett and pluck is that the most harsh, resting state of a long gun or other heavy item within that space is…while on the road or trail, the tailgate is upright, meaning that the foam has to be quite stout… It can have a tendency to compress and downward toward the lower, or hinge portion, of the tailgate while driving.
Any pick and pluck farm I’ve encountered is simply not strong enough given the small space involved on either side when the tailgate is upright.
My solution was to go through the rather difficult task of cutting and shaping much more stout foam. It’s amazing how difficult it actually is to find such form in the size needed. I ended up using multiple kneeling work pads from Lowe’s… simply because I couldn’t find another suitable material. Eventually, I used industrial Velcro to coat all of this form that I had already shaped.
Now that I have done it once from start to finish, figuring it out as I go along… I would approach it somewhat differently now, but would still seek a similar material. The good news is that if you put the time in and are willing to do a careful job, this is a fantastic and if active way to store long items such as the one pictured above.
I do think injecting the entire cavity with foam my might work… Followed by carving out the space that you require. But… There are some mechanical internals that must be protected. These include of the space on either end of the tail gate where the latch arm on the interior must be allowed to move in and turn unimpeded… also includes two cables that attach from the outer central lever that cross toward the two latches on each side. This means you either have to have a channel in the foam To protect the free movement of those cables, or you need a layered set of foam pieces that allow for this movement.
If I had it to do all over again, there are definitely some things I would do differently (with less fiddling). Perhaps now that the cat is out of the bag regarding what I have inside my tailgate… I may do a more thorough write-up...Something I have been hesitant to do simply due to the nature of contents as I use it.
PS. I’m sorry if the above post contains many errors. I am forced to use speech to text features because my vision is really screwed up to the point where I can’t see what I am typing without constantly stopping to zoom in.
