There was another thread on the bed extenders and people stealing them. One person drilled holes and used pad locks. This is a great idea but I think I have one better.

I studied the extender and it is stolen when a thief pushes down and pulls in into the bed. So my idea is to screw some plastic feet with rubber ends to the bottom of the extender near the connection points. When extended these would be on top. They only need to be 1 to 2" inches tall. This way you can not push down on the extender to remove it. You must open the tailgate and extend the extender to remove it by pulling up.

Going to try to find some plastic parts for Ace Hardware or somewhere that might work. I wonder why the manufacturer did not think of this.


Will post pics IF this works.

 

Someone else did something similar. It worked, I think he made legs out of aluminum or something. It may be available by doing a search although I believe some threads were lost when the site was upgraded.

 

I found one method.
Check out:

http://www.geocities.com/skyjet1/SuperCrew.html

 

Once again, I am going to ask this question - "IS this really a problem??" I hear of all of these fixes, but I have yet to hear of anyone actually having their extender stolen. Seems like a lot of work to steal something that won't work unless you take the bed hardware and all.

 

Yes it is a problem in some areas. There was a thread on F150world where a guy was stopped by the truck owner and they found 11 of them in the thief's van. I do not think they would fit many trucks unless tailgate widths are standard. I know most are just over 4 feet wide so you can fit a sheet of plywood or sheetrock etc.

 

A while back, one guy caught a couple of kids in the bed of his truck un-latching his bed extender. These things sell for a few hundred bucks!

The only problem with attaching 'feet' to the extender is that if it's in use with the tailgate open, it can still be ripped off!

That's why I chose the padlock method....I can have the unit folded out onto the tailgate and not worry about it going away.

 

My extender was stolen. My dealer had plenty of similar sob stories for me to listen to. The problem seems to be a lot more severe in the big cities and the crooks seem to prefer stealing from the dealerships directly. Apparently they can get a lot more of them in a short time. My dealer says they have lost as many as 30 in a single night.

 

The locks seem like a good idea, not as easy to take out as the bump stops but would prevent the theft while open. Only problem is they would steal the tailgate then.

What would be good is the pins, some how lock them. (the ones with the big ****)

 

My question is, why dosen't Ford do something about this like making the pins lock (as mentioned above) or selling an "official" bed extender lock kit at the dealership?

I would pay $30-$40 to have a Ford dealer put on a "official" nice looking pair of locks on my bed extender. Just an idea as there must be thousands of these bed extenders out there with this problem and as far as I know the 2002 don't fix this issue, do they?

 

PS. Mine is sitting in my garage right now, the only problem with that is I never know when I might need it. I work on computers (Network Administrator/Starting my own company) for a living but you never know when a friend, co-worker, or yourself may need to move something big.

 

How about putting a malnourished, ill- tempered pit bull in the bed!

I bought a Jason Dimension lid so I could use it a large trunk or haul things if needed. Kind of expensive and not for everyone.