Looking into this. How did the brackets work out? Still unsatisfied?
Overall it worked out. I'm fairly satisfied, but there were a few issues with my 2018 passenger wagon. Alignment holes not matching, provided rivets too short, and a mix up on my side not knowing the mounting hole differences between airline l track and regular l track (4" v 5" center to center spacing). Airline l track is an absolute must if you plan on retaining the rear door trim. The horizontal bed mounting bracket cannot move forward far enough if you mount the bracket directly to the pillar braces. FVC did a good job of responding to my questions and are aware the instructions are lacking. Hopefully this can provide some basic information to other folks.
Step 1: Take it all apart. Surprisingly only broke one clip. No-mar plastic trim tools are a necessity. I used the cheap blue ones from Harbor Freight.
Rear Brackets: I started with the rear passenger bracket first since it seemed like the easiest. The first challenge was the top and bottom alignment holes. The spacing is off ~1/8 inch requiring you to either align the top, bottom, or split the difference (sorry I didn't take a picture). I chose to align the top. Had to put the bottom rivnut in at an angle and its not fully seated. After that I started to set the 3/16 rivets with a pneumatic tool and found the purple circled areas require longer rivets. This is due to the slight bend in the bracket that prevents it from fully seating.
Front Bracket Issues: These ones were a pain for alignment. The top and bottom holes were ~1/4 off spacing between the bracket and the van. Additionally, the location of pemnuts and rivnuts would require elongated holes. Knowing I was going to put the headliner back on I decided to do the following.
Align only the top hole between the bracket and van, remove the top pemnut from the bracket using my drill press to avoid an elongated hole, elongated the bottom pemnut location in the van, and did not insert a rivnut into the bottom alignment hole (circled in red).
Another issue with the front bracket was the lack of a location for the factory black plastic headliner bracket (blue squares). Originally, I planned to grind the FVC bracket to get the headliner piece back in. When I thought about he l track I realized it would never be able to fit in the same location so I dropped the idea.
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Final product: I can try to post some up close pictures before final assembly later, but here is what it looks like all complete. I moved the bed just high enough to clear the bottom trim pieces. Future plan is to put in a slider for two mountain bikes to be fork mounted. I want to reemphasize the need for aircraft l track. Regular l track will not fit the brackets and if you want to keep your rear trim you need the aircraft l track.
Final issue that came up this week is the integrated l-track mounting points on the bed panels are tad undersized to fit the QD cargo tie downs I have. Not sure if this is a bed panel issue or cargo tie down issue. I'm going to see if a different set works. If not I'll have to either take a file to the inner parts of the bed panel l track points or reduce the diameter of the tie downs somehow.
Despite the issues, FVC was very responsive and I give them props for the customer service.
