One of the most useful accessories we added to our Troop Carrier was a Front Runner drop-down tailgate table. It’s perfect for making trailside lunches, as a work place for repairs on small parts, or just a spot to hold small items while loading or unloading. It’s quite strong, and with the plywood extension pulled out there’s a surprising amount of surface area.

However, it has one annoying flaw (at least ours, on our vehicle, does): The table is held closed by two curved extensions of the top frame that snap over the edge of the work surface when you raise it. And when the tension of the clips is adjusted so the table is relatively easy to open, it falls open by itself on bumpy roads or when slamming the door. If ours falls open on the road it rides against the side of the National Luna fridge, and if we don’t notice it has fallen, when we open the door the table rides down the side of the fridge, a corner scoring a nice arc in the cabinet.

I found the solution at a hardware store: a simple sliding-glass-door security pin. I fabricated a mounting plate from a piece of aluminum, drilled and secured it to the edge of the frame, then drilled for the pin, and voilá—an easy-to-deploy table that won’t rattle open on its own.

Front Runner is here.