capturecolorado
Hooray bikes!
Today was the first of several in the process of building out the bed. Despite a late start, I made reasonable progress. Took my time and discussed order of operations and fine-tuned the design with my dad, realized I had plenty of space to build the bed wider than planned, and got height measurements.
Started out with four 8' pieces of 1.5"x1.5"x.125 tube, and 4 soft universal body mount bushings.
Each of the bed mounting points are all a dumb. I'm using the 4 primary mounting locations, and there's 4 different sized...and shaped holes. We came up with a way to enlarge them systematically with a hole saw, by measuring the width that we needed in order to center the bushings on the mounts, then we drilled into a piece of scrap mahogany and clamped that to the mounts, and used that as a guide, keeping the hole saw in position. Now there's 4 symmetrical holes, perfectly sized for the bushings.
I began by drilling the frontmost holes in the pieces of steel that run parallel to the chassis. I've got about 1-1/4" of space between the cab and the front of the flatbed, less depending on where you measure from. Once those two holes were drilled and the pieces of steel were cut to length, I bolted them up to the truck.
Then the cross pieces were cut, four pieces at 43.25" long. I used a couple of small pieces of scrap 1/8" flat bar, clamped one on either side of the tube (top & bottom) to keep the cross pieces properly aligned vertically; squared everything up with a framing square and clamped it all down. Once it checked out, I double checked, then I did it again to be sure. Finally, tacked got started tacking things into place.
Pulled it off and got to work burning everything in and drilled the holes for the rear frame mounts.
Turns out the rear holes were off by a small factor... about 3/8", not sure how that happened, the measurement was good (I checked like 6 times...). So the dremel got a workout ovalizing the holes. Once they were properly ovalized, I got it back on the truck, bolted down and squared up with the cab, and made sure I had clearanced the bolt holes enough to pass for government work.
Once that was done, I pulled it back off and capped the tubes, I have 4 short beads to run tomorrow, then it's time to attack the mill scale with a fervor and slap some paint down on everything.
I'm happy with the bushing kit I found on Amazon, it's inexpensive and the durometer is perfect for this application, soft enough that I'm confident it'll give enough to prevent the box from getting overly stressed, but not so soft that it'll be squirmy. I definitely recommend them for anything of similar application.
Tomorrow morning it's off to Home Depot I go for materials, then my dad and I will be holed up in his wood shop getting everything cut and glued up. Then while the glue is curing and there's not much to be done on that end, I'll get to work on the rest of the steel, and hopefully get it painted so it can be curing overnight, then I expect to be able to have the bed mounted, and begin painting on Monday, hopefully wiring and such that day as well. Not sure if it'll be ready to drive by the end of Monday, that would be cool, but unlikely I think. I still need to get hardware...hinges, latches, etc. for that to happen, and I don't yet have a dialed parts list in order for that to be a thing. I could probably see getting the shell painted and on, but mostly unusable as it wouldn't have a tailgate or lid.
I also haven't figured out what material I need for fenders, but I have a plan for how to make those happen.
No matter what - progress! I think I'm gonna paint it with that gallon of CARC tan as a test color to see what color I want to use, because ultimately I'll likely end up bedlining the whole truck, and want to only do that once....
Started out with four 8' pieces of 1.5"x1.5"x.125 tube, and 4 soft universal body mount bushings.
Each of the bed mounting points are all a dumb. I'm using the 4 primary mounting locations, and there's 4 different sized...and shaped holes. We came up with a way to enlarge them systematically with a hole saw, by measuring the width that we needed in order to center the bushings on the mounts, then we drilled into a piece of scrap mahogany and clamped that to the mounts, and used that as a guide, keeping the hole saw in position. Now there's 4 symmetrical holes, perfectly sized for the bushings.
I began by drilling the frontmost holes in the pieces of steel that run parallel to the chassis. I've got about 1-1/4" of space between the cab and the front of the flatbed, less depending on where you measure from. Once those two holes were drilled and the pieces of steel were cut to length, I bolted them up to the truck.
Then the cross pieces were cut, four pieces at 43.25" long. I used a couple of small pieces of scrap 1/8" flat bar, clamped one on either side of the tube (top & bottom) to keep the cross pieces properly aligned vertically; squared everything up with a framing square and clamped it all down. Once it checked out, I double checked, then I did it again to be sure. Finally, tacked got started tacking things into place.
Pulled it off and got to work burning everything in and drilled the holes for the rear frame mounts.
Turns out the rear holes were off by a small factor... about 3/8", not sure how that happened, the measurement was good (I checked like 6 times...). So the dremel got a workout ovalizing the holes. Once they were properly ovalized, I got it back on the truck, bolted down and squared up with the cab, and made sure I had clearanced the bolt holes enough to pass for government work.
Once that was done, I pulled it back off and capped the tubes, I have 4 short beads to run tomorrow, then it's time to attack the mill scale with a fervor and slap some paint down on everything.
I'm happy with the bushing kit I found on Amazon, it's inexpensive and the durometer is perfect for this application, soft enough that I'm confident it'll give enough to prevent the box from getting overly stressed, but not so soft that it'll be squirmy. I definitely recommend them for anything of similar application.
Tomorrow morning it's off to Home Depot I go for materials, then my dad and I will be holed up in his wood shop getting everything cut and glued up. Then while the glue is curing and there's not much to be done on that end, I'll get to work on the rest of the steel, and hopefully get it painted so it can be curing overnight, then I expect to be able to have the bed mounted, and begin painting on Monday, hopefully wiring and such that day as well. Not sure if it'll be ready to drive by the end of Monday, that would be cool, but unlikely I think. I still need to get hardware...hinges, latches, etc. for that to happen, and I don't yet have a dialed parts list in order for that to be a thing. I could probably see getting the shell painted and on, but mostly unusable as it wouldn't have a tailgate or lid.
I also haven't figured out what material I need for fenders, but I have a plan for how to make those happen.
No matter what - progress! I think I'm gonna paint it with that gallon of CARC tan as a test color to see what color I want to use, because ultimately I'll likely end up bedlining the whole truck, and want to only do that once....
