I feel this is a fail safe. If wind or if you swing your gate open and allow the shock to do the stopping of the weight of the tire/door, It is possible that the shock might snap off your gate, there have been threds of this happening to others. For me, I will need this because I run accessories off the tailgate support bracket and would love the piece of mind that when my kids open the back, they wont just open it until the tail light crunches.
Out of stock, but here's another option more like you're describing.
I just mounted my tailgate limiter from M2M and it was a quick and easy install. I also have the shorter strut that I had been using, which is also a great solution for limiting the tailgate opening to 90°, however it is a charged strut and not a damper...so the tailgate springs open and you have to slow it down so it doesn't hit the end of its travel with more force than you intended. I've already contacted Stabilus, the manufacturer of the damper, to ask about the availability of a slightly shorter damper versus a strut, and it was crickets...no email returned no phone call returned no anything. I've checked other manufacturers as well, and apparently you could get a custom damper made but it would cost hundreds of dollars and very few places are willing to do a one-off. The flaw with a horizontal tailgate in general is that if you have a limiter built in it's typically in the hinges...our OEM hinges and the Raptor hinges have a little teeny piece of plastic at the top and the bottom that is intended to stop the hinge from opening further than a certain point, but that design would still have an impact on the pillar if somebody forced the tailgate open past that point. I can easily imagine that if there is a strong wind or if you were on an angle and the door swings open that it could easily transfer the load from the tailgate past the very robust tailgate brackets onto the sheet metal of the pillar...and bend it. Slowing down the tailgate and stopping it from going further than 90 or 120 is the best way to control any possible collateral damage. Relocating the stud ball on the bottom of the tailgate isn't a very viable possibility because that bottom section of the tailgate is sealed...you can't get to the inside unless you cut a hole in the gate. I imagine there's a thicker piece of metal spot welded onto the inside of the current stud ball location, possibly with a nut plate attached to the inside, that doesn't exist to the left or to the right of that stud...so it's entirely possible that if you drill a hole where you think you want the ball to end up that there isn't enough material to support the stud (and no way to put a nut with a washer on the inside). The next logical way would have been to put a limiting strap from the tailgate to the passenger side of the cargo area, but because the tailgate is thin aluminum and the cargo section is mostly a big plastic panel, I imagine that that wouldn't be a very effective way to stop the movement either. If you want cheaper and a 90° limiter that you just have to be careful and slow down the opening, the gas charge strut is a decent solution. If you want to retain the use of your OEM damper, and have the same functionality during opening and closing, the M2M will do it. Either solution beats a smashed tail light...even one tail light could set you back more than even the M2M setup. The other player in the market is the RTR tailgate limiter, which increases the overall height of the strut assembly and still relies on the integrity of the stud bolts and somebody not opening the door with gorilla force. Those of us with aftermarket bumpers also have to consider the available distance we have between the top of the bumper and the lower lip of the tailgate...I need to lower my bumper by about a 16th of an inch in order to clear the strut and keep it from scuffing when the tailgate is in the closed position. My brackets are slotted, and my hope is that when I loosen it up that I'll have enough downward adjustability to give me that extra 16th of an inch. I wish Ford would have simply done a drop gate and went with a swing out tire carrier mounted to the pillar...and better yet incorporated a roll down rear window in that drop gate...
Thank you for the words of kindness. Very good insight here as well, post some pictures with your shortened shock too if you are able to!
Plenty in stock. That video was the route we took at the early design phases. You will have to get a custom shock made. We experimented with several from the manufacturer and could not find one that we felt comfortable with. You WILL break more than a shock end with that setup. The tailgate will fly out of your hand with that setup. I don't feel comfortable with my kids opening up a door that will knock one of them across the parking lot.
My pleasure! Great product you make... something that might work for the folks who need only slightly more clearance is to remove the washer from the ball stud, but they would then have to cut off several threads from the ball stud in order to keep it from contacting the tailgate when snugging it back up. That would provide about the clearance I need, but it's going to be easier to just loosen my six bumper bolts and hopefully slide it down just a hair. If you could source a 10 mm M8 stud that has a slightly shorter threaded section, or an overall shorter profile from the ball to the surface, that include that in the kit or make it available, that would provide the last bit of clearance some of us might need (in case someone doesn't want to cut their OEM ball stud...even though they are pretty cheap on Amazon). I was using the shorter shock prior to receiving your product, but I went back to the OEM damper instead of the shorter shock because your product gives me the ability to adjust the gate opening to whatever I need. I set it at 90 and all is well. As an aside, The rubber for the rear window glass on the tailgate (this reference applies to hardtops) has a channel and when opening the window at either 90 or 120 it clears the channel...but at less than 90 it would rub...so the only threaded hole on your bracket I imagine someone would be using is the 90 (because if they were okay with 120 they would simply use the OEM setup). My point being that if you wanted you could make a similar product that simply offers only the 90...but I imagine once it's in production drilling the extra holes is no big deal.
