making a roll-up tonneau cover

[bheinen74]

Well, tomorrow I am going to make my rollup tonneau cover.
Got the vinyl outdoor material the other day.
Hope it won't take all day to get it done.
I want to get this on before we get snow, I hate having snow in the bed....
going to use velcro on the edges.
Not sure how I will go about for the roll bars part....but will figure that out as a go.
Probably going to use a fabric glue for the velcro, as I am pretty sure hot glue might damage it.
I still have to make a pattern of one side before i start cutting this

[bheinen74]

been working on it almost 3 hours. made cardboard side template that took some time to get mostly right.

The hot glue is a NO go, it is not going to stick to the cover.
I will have to finish trimming the front and back up, and proabably try to find someone with a sewing machine and have them sew on the velcro, and that is not going to happen today

Also, I am going to probably come up with a cross slat or 2 cross slats to keep the sagging to a minimum. I think some small PVC pipe will work for that.

It is not going to be perfect but hopefully i will have around 40 bucks total when i am all done.

[bheinen74]

So I got about 8 pieces of velcro on this, each about 1inch long.
They hold it just enough to get a sample of what this might look like, but if i mess with it they pull right off.

I looked around and found a scrap metal floor/carpet transtion threshold nail down strip, and cut aobut 2 inches off it for the center propr, i think another one of those just sitting there arched, will be about right.





I will have the long velcro strips sewed completely around not just inch pieces.
Also, for the front, which i havent really decided, i might cut a board that fits the window profile, and just fasten it completely to the board up front. Just really need to roll it up from the tailgate anyway...

[bheinen74]

found some leftover E6000 epoxy glue.
Had enough to do 2 long strips on both left and ride edges all along. It is going to set up tonight, I will let you know if it holds or no.

[bheinen74]

checked to see how the E6000 did after setting up through the night.
Golden.
It is STUCK like aint coming off
So, after work I drove to WalMart and bought another tube to finish things off.
I will have pictures Sunday.
This is definitely going to turn out nice enough for me, not perfect, but still does look promising.

[jcravens]

I'm liking it a lot!

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

[drawcody]

I’ve been planning on doing this for a while. I bought a used Ford F-150 rolltop cover to convert the brackets to use on the Baja. I also purchased some marine vinyl on Black Friday to used for this project. I’ll post more when I’m finished with mine!

[bheinen74]

just a little update.

I drove it a few times to work 36 miles rountrip and it kept wanting to pull loose up front near the cab window.
So i removed it til we had some warmer weather, and then i did some more work on it for that.
I used a privacy fenec slat board that i cut to the cross length up near the window (it seems more sturdy then the piece of pvc tube i first used.. Then I found a house carpet metal/aluminum ridged nail down tranision strip i had, and put the 6 or so screws thru it using the predrilled holes in it, sandwiching the marine vinyl between, and then i used some zipties to try and hold the bottom of the board in place using a couple j hooks hooked thru the 2 metal hoops on the corner of near the bottom. It helped.
I am still needing to do a bit more as it still tried to roll back some, i just need to use a bracekt instead of zips ties wince it tries to flip the board some.
Its not going tp blow off, but I think i am going to use a couple metal brackets for the back corners and similar with the metal carpet strip up toop (that part looks pretty good).
I thought maybe there was air pushing into from the very back bottom of the tailgate, so i squished a rubber washing machine hose into that gap too.
Anyway, i will update again at a later date-had hernia surgery today so no monkeying around to make the imrprovements, but i do think a few sturdy metal L brakets and a nice looking top plate thru the 2 back corners will help it not peel off at highway speeds.

Good luck to anyone else too, and go ahead and post how you are doing on here that would be a good thing, post on this thread as i am sure someone may get a perfect result. I Am close but not quite yet.

for those brackets, I really dont want to drill any holes so I am goign to probbably use som e of the inner top hardware factory screws to hold the brakets so i wont have to drill into the Baja any....

[kamesama980]

it's not air blowing in from the tailgate, the back of the cab creates a wake (vacuum) behind it. low pressure above the tonneau and no change below means a pressure differential. the bed isn't sealed so it can gain/lose air pressure no problem. I've had soft covers on a few trucks and they've always had a dip in the rear half of the bed where airflow coming off the cab hits it and a bulge between it and the cab where the wake/vacuum is directly behind the cab.

That's why 3-box profile cars get worse mileage than wagons or hatches: bigger wake