Wood bed mounting
 

I'd like to mount my wood bed without drilling holes thru the wood. Has anyone else on here done this? I'd like to know if there are any pitfalls I should watch for. To further explain, I'm planning on just running the long bed bolts thru the metal braces only and indenting the bottom of the boards for bolt head clearance--the boards themselves would be mounted conventionally with the metal strips. Any problems I should know about? :eek:

Are you saying that none of the boards will be bolted down, (as in the front,
back and sides? If you are I think that you may have some shifting of the bed with boards moving since they are clamped to the bed and not bolted.

Is there a way to bolt the boards to the cross members from underneath?

Jim

smitty62, I am doing the same thing as you. Bolt the cross sills to the frame using short bolts thru the little plate welded to the cross sill. Then just assemble the wood as usual. I have a pic (I hope).

Smitty,
72afr and I did his bed that way. We thought about putting the bed together off the frame, put decided to do it on the frame. I thought it would be hard to slide 8 bolts into the right holes. Glad we did because when we fitted each board over the bolts, we had a problem with some rivet heads on the frame hitting on 2 boards. They were right above the axle, 3 on each side if I remember right. I just bored out some more wood over them.

We put in the 2 outermost boards, then ran bolts thru the bedsides & boards, then attached all the crossmembers between them. We then set the whole assembly on the frame, lined up the mounting holes and put in the bed mounting bolts. Then put in each board and rail until finished. You may need to massage and work the boards after all are in the make all things to line up. Tighten up the nuts ONLY AFTER everything is in position.

It helps to have 2 people, one on top and one on bottom, to help line things up and put on the lock washers & nuts.

Jimmy, the boards are held by the strips to the cross members. None of the boards are directly bolted to the bed sides or fronts.

We do it here all the time on customer trucks, the 8 bolts that bolt the wood to the frame cause stress on the wood and keeps it from moving (expansion/contraction). We cove the bottom of the wood where the bolt heads are and use square hole large washers tacked to the crossmembers so you can remove the bed without removing the wood. We spent a lot of time improving through r&d on wood bed kits, 3% moisture content,#1 furniture grade stock, routered bead edges that capture the strip to prevent scuffing with edge drains every foot and cross grain splining to prevent splitting and cupping. We have I think the best longest lasting kit available and back it with a warranty of 10 years on properly sealed finished wood.

Interesting...........has this been published here before? If so, I missed it. This info makes it definite--I'll be doing it this way! Thanks to all that replied. :)