Been trying to find someone who sells a molle rack for a V2 Large (f150) GFC and can’t find them. They all say unavailable.
Hello John,
GFC owners are some of the most resourceful bunch of folks I have ever seen. Share with us where are you planning to install the rack you seek. There are several molle panels that come mind for your vehicle.
Cheers,
Robert
I am looking for something like this:
It will be at the front window side. I see that Underland has had them in the past, but they are no longer showing in large
To my knowledge there were 2 sources for that type of molle panel, Underland Overland and Backwoods Adventure Mods.
Whether Backwoods Adventure Mods is fabricating the Molle panel for your application is unknown to me. They were doing so for Tacomas.
Best of luck!
Thank you. Last I checked Backwoods close up shop (the website is gone and he hasn’t answered on this board).
I think I may have to redneck engineer something.
The molle rack problem comes up a lot. Nobody asked, but I thought I’d share my experience.
Before I even knew what a GFC was, one of my customers asked me to design a molle panel for a V1 GFC. For the front and also for the triangle sections. Mounting on the orange welded frame.
I spent about 4 hours measuring and designing - the result was really cool. Looks almost exactly like the other ones you see around. We had a few extra neat features that I haven’t seen on the ones posted here.
Laser cutting and powdercoating the one front panel and two side panels cost about $700 in 3/16" aluminum. Those were pretty thin margins, but California prototype prices, too. My customer traded me something for my design labor - I’m just sharing the numbers from laser cutting and powder coat.
The whole point of a molle panel is that it has a jillion holes. One of the reasons that laser cutting is expensive is because the laser has to stop and pierce for every single hole, so it’s a slow part to make even on a fast laser. Waterjet costs would be similar. One way around this is to use a CNC punch press, but generally then you need to pay for tooling, so you want to be selling a large number of panels to make it back. More than 5, less than a hundred might do it.
It took me a while to learn that GFC geometry is both truck and version dependent. It was obvious very quickly that I couldn’t “productize” our project because I would need many versions and they would be hella expensive. At the time, I only had access to a single V1 GFC and therefore couldn’t simply “power through it” to make many versions for many GFCs.
This is not even considering shipping costs - which, because the panel is likely to be larger than a single pallet, will be significant, on the order of $100 or more domestically.
I have thought a lot about clever ways to make a universal molle panel or … other… ways to address this problem. But many of them would be dependent on the owner of the GFC giving me very good measurements, and taking some responsibility for a rather expensive part. I’m not sure that really makes sense.
This is a very, very long way of saying that I don’t blame these folks for doing a group buy and then shutting things down. They probably didn’t make much money and it’s a tough accessory to make, and make well. Even though it’s a very cool one.
Edit: I’d also like to say that I’m not the final word on this and I might be missing something. But these were my experiences.
Daniel
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Thank you!! They don’t sell them either. I think they did a group buy for Tacomas at one point.
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Thanks so much. Makes sense on the number of holes.
Vice Chief is spot on. I designed one for a Tacoma and priced around have them cut and coated. Was considering making several and selling them. Ended up buying from Backwoods as they were about $30 over my cost. And I know they had at least one that didn’t fit even though same year and GFC model as I have (2013 Taco & V2 GFC) which worried me greatly, but mine fit fine. GFC said did a design change on the V2 causing his not to fit. Unless you can get designs from GFC, tough to make any money.
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I found another option I wanted to show peeps. I think I may build something from these folks:
Multiple custom sizes and shapes!!