Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuck78
After owning my truck for a short while, I noticed when the previous owner replaced the bed wood with some oak plywood on my 62 GMC panel, they left a out the bed mount bolts on all but the rear mounts. The ones over the gas tank were completely missing, as evidenced by the empty space left behind. Then, moving forward to directly over the axle, I alarmingly noticed that the side to side cross brace under the bed wood was sitting directly on the frame. I didn't think this was supposed to be like that, and also shortly after, when hauling tools and having a 6 foot level laying in the back, I noticed that the bed wood seemed to hump up in this location a slight bit. I then started wondering if the previous owner's had bent the rear of the frame down from towing, as it does have a heavy duty rec. hitch. Can anyone confirm this frame/bed support contact for me, or tell me that it's gonna be alright?
I need to go pull out the rubber bed mat and re-examine the problem wth the 6 foot level directly on the wood...
When I first got the truck, I looked at the frame rails and thought to myself, wow, those aren't very tall for using a receiver hitch to tow a car trailer! I had thought at that point that I should reinforce the frame with some heavy duty C-channel. Now I am wondering if I need to unbolt the bed mounts and jack the whole truck up directly in front of the back bumper mounts to the frame, and try and use something to bend the rear frame rails back upwards if this is the case. It is the stronger X-frame, but the frame channel height on this whole generation of trucks left me wondering about their towing capabilities due to the minimal frame rear of the back axle. If it had leafs rather than coils, I would think it would have been less of a problem, but the coils don't support the frame back that far.
Might be time to get out the welder! I can get pictures soon if needed.
Thanks guys.
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1. I doubt that the bed wood has ever been replaced as there was no bed wood in the first place for want of a proper term."plywood".if one sits back and surveys a sitiuation and everything has symptoms and and lot of uninformed people do jump to conclusions.
my outlook is that he is a newby to this vehicle and is unaware as to the flooring material and surmises that it is not "real wood" but plywood that it has been replaced. He has also surmised that the frame is bent downwards becauses a small crosssill is resting on the frame.(can you realize how much weight it would take to bend a frame downwards). the body mount insulators have deteriorated to the point where they have collapsed and the body has settled down causing that crosssill to rest on the frame which cause more confusion to him( it doesn't belong there; it is in the wrong place). Now if someone had replaced the floor, do you not think that they would have replaced the broken down insulators at that time.there is a lot of work to remove a floor from a panel as I aforementioned. one has to lift it off the frame to do the job--not remove it but lift it up and off the frame. the plywood floor splits in the middle and in order to remove it one has to undo all fasteners including the ones that go up from the bottom at the outer side edges of the floor. these bolts go up through the crosssills through the plywood and through the bottom lip of the inside body panel into a welded nut( you must know how these things get rusted up). what happens here is that either the bolt breaks off or the nut breaks loose and spins and you may mention someones name in vain . you then lift up the plywood in the middle of the floor and pull it to the opposite side of the panel so that it clears the sidepanel and wheel well and then you can lift it out. if I had gone through all that work, I think that I would have put in new insulators so that it would be sitting properly, wouldn't you?. that tells me that the floor more than likely wasn't changed. the scenario of the missing bolts is that someone was going to repair the problem and broke a few bolts and spun a few nuts and gave up on it and said to himself or herself, let's just leave this for the next nice person.
ron