Peragon Bed cover

[Mike P]

Because of the spare tire, jack and tool box I want to carry in the bed of the truck, I decided I needed a bed cover for my 87 Ram 50. I’ve used several styles of covers on my trucks over the years and this time decided to try Peragon’s folding cover. It’s pricey, but is all metal, and from what I saw, folds up into a nice compact package and can even be fairly easily removed if necessary.



The problem was (is) that Peragon does not make a cover for the Ram 50s. I called their tech line and the person I talked to was pretty helpful. It appeared that the cover for the 1993-2012 Ford Ranger/Mazda was going to be the closest to fitting……the beds were the same length and the Ram 50 was only supposed to be a 1/16” narrower. He did say that he thought that there would be interference problems between the ramps and the inner fender wells however. I figured I could modify the ramps if necessary and worse case modify the inner fenders if I had to. I went ahead and ordered the cover.



Peragon apparently only makes the cover once the order is placed and the wait period when I ordered mine was about a month (it arrived a couple of days ago). The cover comes with a good set of instruction, but what I really like is the set of short installation videos they put together and posted to youtube (yeah, there are 15 videos, but the longest is only a bit over 2 minutes long so it doesn’t take too much time to get thru them).



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1wG...-Khxceklsb3TSe





I mocked up the side rails and ramps and was very pleasantly surprised the find they cleared the fender wells just fine. Then came the big surprise I wasn’t expecting. The bed on the Ram 50 is apparently 2 inches WIDER than a Ranger. The solution turned out to relatively simple and easy. I bolted a 6’ piece of 1 inch angle iron to each side of the bed with 2 mounting brackets welded to them for the covers corresponding mounting brackets.



Trimming the angle iron, welding the brackets, painting them and adding a thin bead of sealer only added about an hour to the project.







The rest of the installation whet pretty smoothly. Everything went together just like the manual/videos showed (also a pleasant surprise after some of the other products I’ve used). The inner fender wells being closer to the front of the bed on the Ram 50 than they are on the Ranger does make it a little tricky to initially swing the panels in to place but it wasn’t too bad.





As usual there was the fine tuning to get everything to work smoothly without binding, but even that wasn’t too bad…..it just requires some patience.



There is only one other minor issue I noted with using the Ranger cover on a Ram 50. Even after adjusting the bed rails back as far as they will go there is still a small gap (about 3/8”) between the seal and tailgate.







I suspect that is due to the differences in the Ram and Ranger tailgates. I haven’t completely decided how I’ll address this yet…..a flap type seal added to the bed cover, a half round (?) seal added to the tailgate, or just a metal strip added to the tailgate come to mind but I’ll figure that out later.



I decided to try the Peragon cover because I liked the way it folded up to a compact size and I wasn’t disappointed. Being able to completely remove the panels if necessary is also a plus.







It also looks pretty good closed









Of course the bed cover adds no security at all if all you have to do is open the tailgate. For now I’ll just install an oversize deadbolt and eventually build something a little nicer to lock the tailgate from the inside.









Yeah, it would be nice if somebody made a cover specifically for our trucks but for no harder than it is to add the angle iron spacers, this works out very well, and I’m glad I went with it.

[yamahlr]

If I recall correctly (from many moons ago) the early Chevy S10-GMC S15 is a much closer fit than the Ranger. I have an original cover that was made by California Covers In Compton,CA. custom made for my truck in 1988. If anyone would like to come over to take pics and measurements to make their own, we'll arrange it. I'm 9 mles from the Charlotte airport. It can hold up to 250 pounds, goes up on gas struts,locks the tailgate and has a locking handle. It fits great and still functions fine after all these years.Cost a bunch when new,quality piece.

[Mike P]

What type of cover is it? Almost sounds like a 1 Piece fiberglass (or metal).