Installing GapShield
Installation Video Demonstration (with transcript)
Today I'm going to be showing you how to install a gap shield on your pickup truck now as you know the gap shield is a very simple device used to keep debris from falling into the notorious gap in between your truck bed and your tailgate, especially when you have loose materials that you're carrying like mulch rocks and something like that it can fall through even when you're driving. But especially when you drop your tailgate down to start you know pulling that material out a lot of that material can fall down into the gap spill out make a big mess but what's even worse is a lot of times it'll get stuck in there and you have to kind of pick it out with your fingers and just not a fun activity so I'm gonna show you how easy you can fix that and by installing a gap shield the gap shield will work on any pickup truck so it's 60 inches long that should fit the width of any full-size pickup truck what you'll need are just a few simple tools something to clean the surface that you'll be adhering to so whether that be just soap and water or if your truck beds a little bit dirtier or greasy you'll need to get like a degreaser or something like that just make sure that the area that you will be adhering the gap shield to which is essentially the first couple of inches here on the bed of the rear edge of the bed of the pickup truck got to make sure that that's nice and clean so yeah just a rag soap and water if you don't have a full-size pickup truck maybe you've got a compact or if you have some features in on the ends that might interfere with the installation you will need a pair of scissors just you know for a simple little trim to make sure that your gap shield fits just the way that you want it to. I'm also showing here a hairdryer what that is for is if you're trying to install the gap shield on a day that's maybe a little cooler 3m who is the supplier of the high-strength adhesive tape that we use to lay the gap shield down they recommend that you don't try to install that tapes some below 20 degrees centigrade so by applying a little heat to your gap shield in the tape area after you've installed it and pressing it down especially if it's cooler you're going to get a lot better adhesion of your gap shield to your pickup bed so again first thing that you'll need to do is clean the surface the next thing that you want to do is get your adhesion promoter packet out of the box it's just this small packet from 3m it's a little sponge inside here that's been soaked in the adhesion promoter you're going to need to use every little bit of this so use it sparingly take the little sponge out and just cover the surface that you'll be applying the tape to you don't need to go any further than that it doesn't have to be soaking but especially if the surface is kind of porous you want to get as much of this on there as you can I'm just going to dip it back in the packet make sure you get all the promoter I can out of it and there I think I've got the whole surface covered okay next thing I'm gonna do is grab my gap shield and we're gonna do essentially what's called a dry fit so before you pull they read backing off of the adhesive tape we're gonna lay your gap shield in place I try to dry set this you'll see that it's maybe just a little bit long for our f150 here just no problem so I got my scissors it looks like I need to trim off about 3/8 of an inch again you don't want it to hang up on the edges or else it won't lay lay flat so you kind of see there I've got maybe an eighth of an inch gap on either side that'll allow to grow a little bit when it gets hot so that's dry fit very nicely so now that I've allowed the adhesion promoter to dry again when it's warm out that's you know maybe ten minutes or so but just make sure it's kind of dry to the touch then we're ready to install our gap shield like anything that has a high-strength tape adhesive to it you're going to want to do it right the first time and the best way that I have found is getting this rigid flange here on the gap shield you see that that'll be your rear edge and you want to line that up with the rear edge of your truck bed you can't move it forward a little bit but never more than three-quarters of an inch so try to keep that edge nice and flush with the back edge of your truck bed and that'll give you kind of a guide to keep your gap shield going on straight also never take all of the red tape backing off all at once what you're gonna want to do is just get it started so take take some off of both strips get your gap shield kind of in place all the way across and then line up that rear edge gonna press down as you're going along pull the tape as you need to and try to keep your gap shield nice and you know kind of pull it tight as you're doing this and keep that rear edge just aligned with the back of your pickup you don't need to press down real firmly now we'll do that later right now what's important is just getting this on the straight as you can without having a touchdown not in the spot that you want it to be okay so there we go now you can apply good pressure all the way across the adhesion is always better if you apply good pressure to it it's a pressure-sensitive adhesive so once you have it on make sure you put some good pressure all the way down you know there's probably better ways of doing this if you got a roller or something like that I'm just using my hands for the demonstration here there seems yeah I've got it on pretty straight if it is cold outside just give it a little bit of heat directed right at the tape area and push down on it although medium pressure is the best way to get the best adhesion again the free end of the gap shield free edge just lays flat over the top of the tailgate and as you close the tailgate it'll just roll up like that that's how it should look when it's installed properly when you drop the tailgate you have materials that will just kind of fall down across the gap shield and obviously the gap is covered and you won't have that falling down into the gap the other way that you can use your gap shield is you can take this free end you just keep it tucked down into the gap let's take you a minute to do there you go that's the way that you might want to have your gap shield most of the time so that it's not the way when you're sliding other things in and so forth it should tuck down in most pickup trucks and not interfere with the closure of the tailgate for some let's say maybe you have a backup camera or something like that that's got a little wire coming across you may need to make just a little slit in the gap shield or trying to get it tucked in there where it doesn't interfere with that but the tailgate will still close nicely and in this case you can see there how the gap shield acts like a really nice seal that's great for people that might have a cap or a tonneau cover on your truck it keeps a lot of the dust and moisture from coming up from below and really getting the inside of your truck bed dirty but X is a nice seal in that position in when you're ready to use it open the tailgate then you just slide it out like that and it's ready to go with the General Motors truck bed you can see the corrugations come all the way to the back the gap shield has a more rigid flange and then a soft flanger more flexible flange the rigid flange which is further rearward you just want to adhere to the top sides of these corrugations so just the top surface of these corrugations you don't try to push it down into the corrugation if you do that'll kind of create some kind of waffling pattern on your gap shield and it won't lay as nicely and flat you can push the flexible taped area down into the corrugation especially if you used a little bit of heat it'll flex a little bit better it's not important that that seal off completely what you're trying to do is keep you know most of the big debris from falling down into the tailgate gap there's some dust or whatever gets to gets through that that's okay but again you can adhere it on the forward side of the tape but the important part is make sure you don't try to push down this rigid flan down and down into the corrugations that way you'll have a nice hinge point on the General Motors product just real quickly for those of you who might have a drop-in liner on your truck the preferred way of installing the gap shield is to actually lift up that the liner and install the gap shield again with the rigid flange up against the the rear edge of the of the truck bed and adhere it to directly to your truck bed not onto the liner you put it you slide it underneath the liner you might have to have somebody hold it up for you so that you can get the adhesive tape applied without you know making any big mistakes In some cases you might have to trim a little bit off of your liner if it's over folding the gap shield but in most cases it should work as is again most pickup trucks have a nice flat surface and they'll have a nice 90-degree corner between your vertical and your horizontal the the General Motors pickup has some geometry in the corners you can see this kind of rounded gusset here if you allow your gap shield to ride up onto that it's going to cause a kind of an odd crease to your gap shield so as you see here what we've done is we've kind of trimmed around that gusset but then came back to as far as we could onto the tailgate without interfering with anything so kind of trim around that gusset if you have another type of aftermarket product that might be getting in the way it's okay to trim around that I saw that as you close your tailgate it's not going to hang up on anything that you don't want it to see how nicely that that lays down flat now again this is in warm weather in cold weather what you'll see is if you leave the the gap shield and in this position and you you have your tailgate closed for a while it's going to take a little while for that gap shield to lay back down you can simply just kind of smooth it out real quick if that's an issue or as I said before you can keep your gap shield tucked down into the gap here then that way even in cold weather the the gap shield will will not be in the way but can be ready for you to use at any point