Continuing the pin saga, I ended using an older Yakima pin I had that fits with their locks, and is short enough.
The other issues are:
One needs to make sure the back deck is fully extended or the lift gate will hit the back deck.
The knob used to allow swivel the back deck to swivel is not secured to the back deck and knowing me will soon be lost, so I am looking at backups.
.
The back deck attachment piece is sort of permanently attached to the swing portion.
That is secured by 3 safety hex bits. I really wish they would made the attachment using the same pin system that attaches the swing base to the van. Then it would be one lock and one bolt to remove. This would allow normal liftgate operation As it is now I need to spin the unlock handle (shown in the above picture right side between van and swing base), then pull a safety release and swing the unit out everytime I want access to the back. The other option is removing everything, which is how I will normally have it though. Kind of a small gripe. Last gripe is about the Same Key System (SKS) that Yakima uses. The swing base had one key, the top deck another, the cargo box a third. Add in the roof rack and that’s four different keys. I had a few extras and ordered some more off eBay so all 12 of my locks are the same. Prepare to spend $$ if you don’t have key cores and want yours to all match.
The support jack seems a little flimsy and not very secure, so I am going to look into a folding trailer jack to see if it will help. The jack is the extension on the piece of wood. It’s basically an extending rod that is unsupported at both ends.
It is not mandatory and only provides a little extra support.
All in all, not bad. It will be used as a cooking platform up top, and to carry firewood(used fence boards in my case) below. It seems well built and sturdy. I will update with more pictures after my first trial run this weekend.
The other issues are:
One needs to make sure the back deck is fully extended or the lift gate will hit the back deck.
The knob used to allow swivel the back deck to swivel is not secured to the back deck and knowing me will soon be lost, so I am looking at backups.
The back deck attachment piece is sort of permanently attached to the swing portion.
That is secured by 3 safety hex bits. I really wish they would made the attachment using the same pin system that attaches the swing base to the van. Then it would be one lock and one bolt to remove. This would allow normal liftgate operation As it is now I need to spin the unlock handle (shown in the above picture right side between van and swing base), then pull a safety release and swing the unit out everytime I want access to the back. The other option is removing everything, which is how I will normally have it though. Kind of a small gripe. Last gripe is about the Same Key System (SKS) that Yakima uses. The swing base had one key, the top deck another, the cargo box a third. Add in the roof rack and that’s four different keys. I had a few extras and ordered some more off eBay so all 12 of my locks are the same. Prepare to spend $$ if you don’t have key cores and want yours to all match.
The support jack seems a little flimsy and not very secure, so I am going to look into a folding trailer jack to see if it will help. The jack is the extension on the piece of wood. It’s basically an extending rod that is unsupported at both ends.
It is not mandatory and only provides a little extra support.
All in all, not bad. It will be used as a cooking platform up top, and to carry firewood(used fence boards in my case) below. It seems well built and sturdy. I will update with more pictures after my first trial run this weekend.