I have a Roll-n-Lock on an 03 F150 and my daughter managed to remove (snap off) the locking bar attached to the tailgate. The sheet metal screws sheared off and are flush with the plastic trim on the tailgate. The screws are really hard and drilling them seems to take forever. If I can remove the plastic trim I think there is enough screw sticking up for me to grab and turn them out.

Any clues how to remove the plastic strip? It seems to be held in with really tough clips and I'm not sure if it'll be destroyed if I force it off.

Thanks.

 

Take the access panel off the inside of the tailgate, and then you can push out the clips that keep the tailgate trim on.

 

Triton_2002,

Thanks. The bed has a plastic liner in it and I did not remove all the screws holding it down, but it does appear the access panel is spot-welded in place. I have an F-350 that has a removable access panel so I looked for that on the F-150.

Unfortunately my window of opportunity closed; the F-150 went my daughter when she took off for college after Thanksgiving. I won't see the truck for about 3 weeks, but then I'll remove the whole plastic liner on the tailgate and see if I missed a smaller access panel. I need to remove the liner anyway - we are going to coat the bed with Line-X. It's a "farm truck" and sees lots of abuse.

Many thanks for your help!

 

I don't think the access panel is welded on, unless someone did that themselves. You need to occasionaly adjust the mechanism for the handle/lock, so welding the cover would make that pretty difficult.