jeepguy553

Just did some shopping at Lowes website. It turns out that for $52 worth of steel stuff and some welding wire/gas you could nearly build 2 of the Vector dock systems. You could do one for $36 but you would have enough conduit and steel flat stock left over to frame up another one. For the cost of 4 more 3/4" conduit elbows (at about $7 each) you can have another one for your buddy.
Oh yeah! I forgot about the 1" plastic end caps. Add another $6.04 + tax to the price for 4 end caps. Total price tag for two of these things? $58.40 with tax. Toss in a rattle can or two of bedliner and an $8 sheet of expanded metal and VOILA!!!! You now have your own dock. I bet changing the plate over the compass to something like gutter mesh would eliminate the compass calibration problems.

My design mod....

Instead of simply having the single rail along the front of the dash why not make use of that space too? Bend and weld in some more conduit along the rail and place some of the mesh (plastic or steel) inside of the gap. Now you have another area to store stuff in AND you can still mount stuff to the rails using the RAM mounts because they work with anything from 1/2" to 1" diameter.

jeepguy553

Here is a sort of CAD (crappy I know) drawing of what I am talking about.



Thoughts? It would use the same mount places as the original design. Add a few small metal tabs along the inside of the frame rails and there you have the mount points for the plastic mesh or whatever you decide to use. As another add-on you could add some small bumper feet under the main/center hoop to help keep the rattle down. God knows Jeeps don't need any help creating rattles.


Item Qty Unit Total
3/4" x 10' conduit $3.95 1 $3.95
1" x 10' conduit $6.85 1 $6.85
3/4" conduit elbow $3.72 8 $29.76
1/8" x 2" flat $6.98 1 $6.98
1" plastic end caps $1.51 4 $6.04
Sub $53.58
Tax $4.82
Total $58.40

jeepguy553

For anyone who is interested, I built this thing yesterday...well kinda. I still need to add the smaller tubes in the front and two more tabs under the main hoop to mount it to the top of the MyGig space. Anyway, here are a few pics of what I have so far. For $23 worth of conduit I have built a pretty cool dash organizer. The space between the front and rear rails and inside the main hoop will be filled with 6" plastic gutter mesh fastened with small black zip ties.

WhosUrBuddiee

Sorry for being dumb, but I have no idea what this is suppose to do.

jeepguy553

It is a sort of copy of the dash organizer that a lot of guys are buying for $130. It mounts to the top of the dash and allows you to mount stuff like GPS units and cameras using RAM clamp mounts.

eraujk

Aha i gotcha now. looks good.

jeepguy553

Thanks! It will look much better once I finish it. Couldn't finish it this past weekend because my wife works nights as a psych nurse...so I had kid duty. I should be able to get the front rails and supports tacked into it this weekend. After that, it is just a matter of shooting it with rattle can bed liner and adding the 6" gutter mesh with zip ties.

rainmaker4171

But, I bought a Vector E-Dock yesterday for $95 and I'd rather pay someone and extra $4or $50 for a couple hours of labor. Mainly, I'm lazy LOL

jeepguy553

Thanks, rainmaker...
This isn't really about saving money or anything like that. It is more of a self-motivation thing. I started doing this just to see if I could. It will be finished today. I'll probably be out of the office by 1pm and I'll have it done before the sun goes down. The little bit of fab I have left shouldn't take more than an hour or two. After that, it's just paint/bedliner and gutter mesh with zip ties. Bolt 'er in...done.

With the addition of two rails along the front and the gutter mesh, this thing should give me plenty of space to throw stuff like wallets, sunglasses, etc. The best part about the gutter mesh is that it shouldn't interfere with the compass module operation. One thing I did notice, though. The compass module is mounted under the top cover over the MyGig. There is another antenna in there that looks a WHOLE HELLUVA LOT like a GPS antenna. The general consensus is that the GPS antenna is on the passenger side roll bar under the nylon cover. Maybe I am wrong...color me a dumbass if I am...but that antenna had a single lead and it was directly wired to the back of the MyGig. I guess it could be the Sirius XM antenna. Maybe someone else will chime in. Either way, I doubt that the steel rail and plastic gutter mesh on top of the MyGig will screw with the GPS or compass like the others are said to do.

jeepguy553

Fab work done. Got the first coat of bed liner sprayed too.