The center brace in the access hole needs to be sliced through, the license plate light wire is attached right under it though, be sure to move that out of the way.
80 Series Tailgate Lid Installation Instructions
1
Remove the carpet, this bit is easy.
2
Pull the access plates, the cut line goes right through the middle one.
A note for plasma users:
Take note of the foam blocks I show in the photo here, they are hidden in the tailgate on the linkage bars, if you plasma the opening without removing the blocks they will make a big smelly burnt foam mess.
3
Layout for the cut.
I send a cardboard template with each lid. 6 bolt holes locate it on the tailgate, drop bolts in the holes and trace the inner cut line.
4
Trace the line.
On lighter colored Cruisers a sharpie works great, if you have a black or green truck, you might want to have a paint marker on hand.
5
Locate the support braces.
6
7
Take a deep breath, and cut!
8
Watch out for the wire.
9
The big hole in your tailgate.
10
Assemble the hardware
11
No really, this would seem nearly impossible if you do not use this trick.
13
All set
Kevin M Rowland
You can see the divots where there are 2 ribs spot welded in with 3 spot welds each. With a normal length jigsaw blade you can cut right through the ribs if you go slow, but take note of where they are.
One is located on each side of the center access plate, there is a picture further down the page that shows them from the inside.
Start your cut.
In the top right corner there is a little plastic plug that makes a nice starting spot for a jigsaw cut, no drilling required.
A jigsaw makes quick work of this, a plasma cutter makes luxury work of it (make sure you pull the foam blocks if you use the plasma). Cut off wheels and nibblers work fine as well.
Here you can see the braces, the two vertical ones are on every 80 series, the LX versions have the added horizontal brace along the back.
The hardware would be tough to get together unless you send the allen wrench through the hole, line the washer, and lock-nut up on the allen wrench and use it to aline them to the hole, pull out the allen wrench while holding up on the hardware and thread the screw in. Makes quick work of it.
12
Bolted in place
The harder to reach portions of this tailgate were sound deadened before we bolted the lid in place, the center section has yet to be finished.
Any foil backed sound deadening really helps to clean up the space and brightens it up enough to prevent loosing things in the corners.
For info on sound deadening check out this post in my forum.
Next up, see what you can stuff in there!
For more installation info, including an instalation video:
check in here.
