Taking the fiberglass topper off my truck so I can carry a ATV has been such a pain that I almost bought a 2nd truck just to avoid all the hassle.

My short box F-350 topper weighs in at over 250 pounds. Previous removal / install operations required 3+ people (prefer 5) and on one occasion resulted in the rear window being broken at a cost of $700.

Just before I layed down the bank check on the salesmens desk and commit myself for another 60 easy payments I had a brain flash and decided to build something to easily remove and replace my topper instead of investing in another depreciating vehicle.

After some initial concept drawings I noticed that what I needed looked a lot like a engine hoist with a articulating platform that would go inside of the topper and lift it up off the truck.

Well, thats exactly what I built and I'm here to say that it works - wonderfully. Its so easy the wife could do it.
Remove the topper clamps - roll the articulating lifting pad on the arm of the "Lift-Off Topper Popper" into the the topper and operate the hand pump to jack the topper off the truck. Pull the truck out of the way and set the topper down on blocks or - I use a small trailer so I can haul the topper out of the way behind the house.

I paid $200 for the enging hoist and another $100 in materials. Interesting is after building the thing I discovered that it is now a lot easier to stash my ice fishing gear in the garage by just jacking the heavy stuff all the way up through the rafters. Beats the old carry it up the ladder stunt.

If your interested in building your own or my design sketches etc - PM me I will add a picture to my PICS here. Might take awhile to go through the picture approval process so be patient. And FYI - I did register the drawings for patent search so dont get any wise ideas...LOL

 

If you had a garage why didnt you get a jeep top hoist? Or is there not enough room in there.. Still sounds like a good idea.
Just a lil expensive though.

 

You are correct - not enough height.

 

I see. I still manually take the top off my jeep(180lbs). Now that its lifted theres not enough hight where id like to put it and where there is enough hight theres no room underneath... [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-sad.gif[/img]