Truck bed toolbox rubber

[born4ford]

Thought I would share an idea for replacing the gasket on a 1965 F250 under bed toolbox door. I spent hours searching the "interweb" and called two suppliers that carried toolbox gaskets for '73 - '79 trucks to be sure that they wouldn't work. Then I searched for something "off label" that I could use to weatherproof my toolbox. I checked door weather stripping, fridge gaskets, industrial extruded neoprene, all sorts of stuff. I finally decided that I had to have the gasket/rubber material in my hand to be sure it could work. First stop was Orielly's Auto Parts where they had Super-stik, 100% EPDM automotive weather stripping, shaped in profile like a "D". It worked great. Here are photobucket pictures http://s1369.photobucket.com/user/born4 ... %20Toolbox

I slid the weather stripping over the door gasket retainer bracket and then added stainless screws with nylon washers. It isn't screwed down in the pictures but I checked for fit and the door closes nicely. I sprayed a little WD-40 into the center of the weather stripping after I had it pushed about 6" onto the bracket and it really helped with getting the rest pushed on.

Once the box is re-painted I will need to fit the gaskets where they meet on each side. I also included a picture of the outside of the toolbox that I painted with a Rust-Oleum product that is supposed to be flexible and water-proof. Took 2 - $9.50 cans but I think it's covered well.

Now I need to figure out the gasket between the toolbox flange and the body of the truck. There wasn't one in place when I pulled the box. Any ideas?

Julie

[ICEMAN6166]

i have pulled several of the toolboxes and there was never anything between the lip and the bed.



your door gasket looks good

if you are really wanting to use something between the box and bed you might try camper tape used to seal camper tops to the bedrails.not sure if that would be too thick or not.

[jamesdfo]

Have a look @ these , and see if any match the profile of the original.....and there may be other stuff on their site that would work as well.....

http://www.steelerubber.com/universal-parts

[born4ford]

Thanks for the tip. I looked at the Steele Rubber site but decided that I really needed to see the stuff in person instead of ordering, paying shipping and then possibly paying shipping to return if it didn't seem right. I found that a lot of the sites with rubber that looked like a possibility for a replacement had big minimum orders, too. The stuff from O'Reilly's was $12 and I could get a good look at it first without buying it.

I thought there must be a gasket between the toolbox flange and body because I read on some site (not here, obviously) that a guy cut a gasket out of some sort of neoprene for that. Mine had all sorts of caulk there.

Julie