How to Adjust a Weather Guard Tool Box Lid

You finally got that new truck of your dreams. Now it’s time to buy some accessories. In the old days, a tool box was always the first item that was installed on a pickup truck. While you could always grab a new tool box at your local home store, Weather Guard and RKI were always two of the top brands for anyone looking for quality.

Even the best made products in the world still need tweaking and adjustments to get it just right. In this article, we take a look at how to adjust the latches on your Weather Guard tool box, so the lid closes securely.

The Problem

The tool box lid was not completely closing on the passenger side.

Most people who have a tool box installed on their pickup truck will spend most of their time opening and closing the lid from the driver's side. The problem is, even the best tool box brands will have a little flex in the lid when closing from one side of the vehicle. Especially if we are talking about aluminum tool boxes.

Because there is a little flex in the lid, the latch on the passenger side of the tool box would not fully click into the locking mechanism. To fix this, you would have to walk around to the passenger side and pull down the lid until you hear a click.

The other issue was having to slam the tool box lid to get it to close properly. You shouldn’t have to do this every time you access your tool box. The truck accessory store we purchased from that installed the tool box could not get the lid issue resolved, so we tackled it ourselves. Let’s take a look at how to resolve this issue.

How to Adjust the Driver's Side Latch

The lid on the Weather Guard tool box has two latches that engage into the locking mechanism. There is one on the driver's side and a second one on the passenger's side. If you have to slam the lid to get it to “click” into the locking mechanism, you will need to remove the latches and put shims underneath.

As illustrated by the photo above, it doesn’t take a large shim to resolve the issue. A shim around 1/8” will do the job. You can experiment with round washers.

How to Adjust the Passenger Side Latch

The shims on the passenger side latch need to be a little thicker

Adjusting the passenger side latch with shims that are a little larger is the key to getting the one-piece lid on your Weather Guard tool box to close properly when pulling it down from the driver's side. Like we mentioned earlier, most lid closures on a truck mounted saddle box will be from the driver's side. The shims in the photo above don’t look much thicker, but they are, and it’s just enough to get the latch to engage a little further into the locking mechanism so it “clicks”.

Adjusting these latches properly with shims will allow the latches to fully engage with the locking mechanisms using minimal effort. There is no need to slam the tool box lid every time you need access inside. A simple adjustment will save you a lot of frustration, especially after spending close to a thousand dollars on a premium tool box.