Since it's been almost two years, how is your box holding up ? Have you made any modifications ?
Hey thanks for asking and for bringing this thread back to life.
The box stayed in the back of my truck from late November of 2011 to June of this year. So thats 19 months of getting the **** beat out of it, working out of it, etc. It has had 6 inches of snow setting on top of it at times, been through hail and one tornado. And I cant begin to tell you how many miles it rode back there going from job to job.
My vinyl wrap still looks decent to very nice in places. Front cover is scratched in a few places and the back side has some heavier battle scars but the wrap held up 1000 times better than I thought it would.
As for the interior of the box, the drawers are still straight as a string even after all those miles on gravel and field roads. I had to replace 2 set of slides after launching the truck in the air (picture the dukes of hazzard) while driving through a field and hitting a rice levee hidden in the rice stubble. It took me 30 plus minutes to reorganize all the sockets that jumped out of their holders. You can not imagine how pissed I was after that. A week later I was going to a gravel road that I have been on every week for my entire life and unbeknownst to me that dug it out and put a tile in to aid in draining a field of excess water. The way they backfilled it left a nice little ramp and I hit it running 50 to 60 mph. So I had another socket reorganizing party shortly after that. The point I am trying to make is that I have put it through everything.
Since the photos of the box were posted, I have altered it some. Not really the box but the exterior of the frame. I cut the looped handles off the side and welded flat plat on both sides of the box. I then bought 2 black Geneva boxes. Both of them are 5 drawer models with the drop down front door, so I added 10 more drawers for the goodies. I essentially took everything out of the middle drawer and broke them down into the smaller side boxes. Added some more stuff that I needed and quickly filled both of them. I kept buying bigger and bigger wrenches, and crowsfeet, etc, so I split my wrench drawer into 2 drawers. One STD and one METRIC. At the end of June, I switched jobs. Same family, just a different division of the corporation. I moved into the shop at their tractor dealership as a mechanic/tech, working less hours and making a whole lot more money and it was the best decision I have ever made in my life. My road box now sits on a roll around steel table all day and occasionally I have to load it up and make service calls but thats only during planting through harvest. We dont hardly have any winter service calls at all, which is fine cause I hate the cold weather. I have added a HR 44" bottom roller to sit along side of the roadbox to hold the remainder of my stuff that does not go on the road.
I just remember that I never got back on here and posted pics of the other 2 boxes that me and my boy built and sold. One was red and one was black. My camera is back at work but I will try to do that before it this thread goes back toward the bottom again.
As for the 2 other boxes, the only complaint that I heard out of one of the guys is that he broke a weld on a piece of angle that held the gas filled shock absorber that lifts and holds the lid up. Yeah I added shocks on both of those and I still have the old hinge style on mine. They work flawlessly and a 3 year old child could open that heavy *** lid with no problem. What happened? He was out pulling wrenches on one of his combines during harvest and the wind was blowing 40 gusting 50 plus. He parks with his tailgate to the wind (first mistake) and when he opened the box lid, it got away from him and instead of braking the shock it bent and broke the angle iron that was spot welded to the sheet metal lid. Guess I had a cold weld or something to that affect but the wind was bad violent that day. It was busting the glass out of tractor doors that got open in the wind as well. As for the broken lid, I have offered to have the lid re-powdercoated for him once he or I repair it. But other than that, they have both held up great.
