Has anyone added any sort of mounting to the front wall of the bed (up closest to the cab?) I have an aux lithium (lifepo4) battery in an ammo can that I'd like to suspend there.

It's currently riding on a bed slide, but any time I pull the slide out all the wires that charge it (solar and DC-DC converter) have to pull out with it. It worked all last year but eventually they'll chafe on the bed liner, kink, get snagged, or caught in the slide tracks.

The box is too large to tuck in front of the wheel humps where the bed slide doesn't occupy, so unfortunately that's out. It'd have to mount to the wall of the bed and be elevated ~8" to allow the bed slide to go beneath it. That means a solid mount to suspend an ~80lb box as I can't just anchor it to the wall and let it rest on the floor.

If you've added any sort of mounting to the front wall I'd appreciate some input. I could drill and put two unistrut tracks going horizontally but I have no idea how I'd do this with the bed on the truck. Accessing the nuts from beneath the truck, reaching between the cab and the bed, sounds difficult to impossible.

Pics are of its current location and proposed. Thanks!

 

BuiltRight bas tons of bed shelving and rack options, you should check it out
https://www.builtrightind.com/collec...150-and-raptor

 

How about some aluminum angle and flat bar sitting on the cap rail, side to side?

 

Yeah, I actually have their panels (installed shortly after I put the bed slide in, not pictured). Sadly nothing for the front wall. Unfortunately too many contours and stuff of the bed sides around both the front and rear built right panels to mount the can to. I did have success with a giant rotopax but the ammo can is sadly larger/longer

That's not a bad idea, though I think I'd have to suspend the can from whatever rack I'd make. Otherwise I'd just see ammo can in my rear view mirror if I placed it on top, and if anything happened with my anchoring it'd fly through the camper shell glass, and probably through the back window of the truck too. I'll have to toy that one over. Not sure how confident I'd be in self tapping screws in to the cap rails suspending a projectile. Would be trying to rock forward and backwards like a pendulum under acceleration and braking, and deadly if it broke free. I take the truck on some pretty gnarly trails finding camp sites.

Thanks guys. I probably should have built a smaller battery, but the price on huge cells was right. The can definitely adds some extra bulk too but I had to put it in something enclosed to maintain temperature. Can be damaged charging below freezing.

 

Someone else mentioned some aluminum flat bar on the sides of the bed you could use to support a self of some sort that hangs on there and drop down to the lowest point and still clear your slide in. Or is there room to go the other way and put some legs on the bottom or your bed outside of your existing slide in and build a shelf out of some angle aluminum best for weight across the bed and fasten your amo can battery to that? Either way you still have to figure a way to hold it tight against the front of the bed. That IMHO would not take as many fasteners since the weight is already supported from the top or bottom you just need to keep it from moving aft when your doing the drag strip take offs Call me crazy maybe Run wide Velcro all the way across if you can get it stick to the bed somehow 1" wide by 5 ft across might be a lot of holding power we use industrial stuff all the time on my ship . Just thinking outside the box.

 

I want to follow this thread to see what comes up idea-wise. I put up a similar post a while ago and never got any response. I want to mount my Hi-Lift jack to the front of my bed with my MaxTrax mats below it, and want to figure out some way to reinforce the front wall of the bed, I think the Hi-Lift is just a bit too heavy to mount directly. And I'm probably going to be getting a bed cover so don't want to mount it to the stronger top rail.

 

See my solution here.

 

Thanks, Delta! That looks great and just may be what I need, nice job!