47-55.1 Project "Bickle" 1948 1/2 ton 4.3 4l60e

[joedoh]

yeah travis is crazy talented, I saw him do a swap with a 69 GMC long bed and a 91 c1500 shortbed in a weekend, tbi and shortened the bed, everything.

had to get the old wood out of whoa black beddy. if you havent done this before, it sucks. the bed wood is put in with perimeter bolts and angle strips, and lots of extra bolts in the cross sills. you can go ham and cut the wood straight across, through the bed strips, but that ruins the bed strips if you were planning to reuse them.

if you want to save them, dont bother trying to take off 70 year old nuts, they wont budge with a gallon of penetrant on them, and why would you want to save old hardware like that anyway. what I do is use a long (9") sawzall bimetal blade and slide it in between the wood and the cross sills. the long blade will flex. then a quick cutoff wheel on the side bolts, and for that stubborn front cross sill that is bolted both horizontally and vertically, I just get a 7/16 socket on my impact and a 7/16 box wrench and tighten. snap snap snap.



everything will just kind of fall out when you get all the perimeter bolts out. viola! strips and cross sills intact.



the angle strips are spot welded to the sides, so I take a screwdriver and pry till I can see the spots and then I use an air chisel to pop them. easy peasy



clearance for tires.



put the s10 bed floor on the frame, had to do a LOT of trimming. my friend wanted the bed sides for his roadster blazer (to cap the sides with the bed rails) and so I told him where to cut. he did ok but some spots were wavier than ruffles. I got it all sanded smooth though




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