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Locking the cab tilt lever

Given the price of truck parts, I am uncomfortable with the thought that Fuso does not provide any way to fully secure the truck.
Much to my amazement, there is no ability to lock the cab tilt lever to stop someone from accessing the engine. To me that’s just bizarre.
I have looked at quite a few different light trucks and apparently very few of the major manufacturers seem to think that this is important.
Personally, I do, so I decided to do something about it.

 

Granted, unless the bullbar is tilted it is not possible to raise the cab on my truck but, should someone try, they would definitely damage the bodywork at the front of the cab; the antennae mounts on each side of my bullbar would be driven into the front quarter panels.
If you have read my “Cab tilt warning system” article you would know that I have already done this by mistake, so I know what happens.
Someone wanting to access the engine would not care if the truck were damaged, so how do you deter them from trying to tilt the cab?

 

I had been thinking about this problem for months but all of the solutions I came up with were quite complex or difficult to implement. I just couldn’t think of an easy way of locking the cab release handle. Then, one morning I had an epiphany… and the solution was so simple!

 

Using some 40mm x 5mm flat bar I fabricated a bracket to fit under the cab release handle. This bracket has a few extra bends to allow it to clear the cab’s bodywork, but basically it is just a 90 degree bracket with a few holes in it.
With the bracket installed to the cab the hole position in the release lever was marked on the bracket. The bracket was then removed and the hole drilled.

 

The only other thing I did was to replace the existing cab handle bolts with slightly longer ones.
As yet I have not painted the bracket. I will do that when I have some more things to paint.

 

I am very happy now that I have a simple, functional way to secure the cab locking lever.