Well, I suppose now that it's done I could probably reduce the thread down to 50 pages by removing superfluous posts from it. LOL.

The battery being back there would also preclude you from wanting to open the area to the cabin - though I know old Volkwagons had their battery under the back seat and off-gassing battery juices didn't kill off those owners... or did they? Anyway, the Ford design was an afterthought from using the wagon floor pan. They left it open and punched holes in the floor to let water drain, but it doesn't take much to make holes in floors stop draining. Surface tension with water is the main problem. The tonneau cover would help, but as you indicated the recess behind the window is a hard issue to address.

I'm not so much a fan of hydraulics either - certainly not a fan of what they want to charge for them! $500 was just out of my (logic) budget. My setup took more time, but cost $50 in parts. And I enjoyed the engineering part of it. I have Doug's headers and there was no easy way to run a cable. Other than hacking $600 headers.

Feel free to host a thread here on yours and we'll do the best we can to rack up a few pages of comments, and advice, on it too!