Installing Bed Wood

[kieth]

We just went thru installing the wood in our Fleetside SWB. We cut our own wood, sanded it, primed it, painted it black with chasis saver satin, and final coated it with Baehr outdoor paint (we did not get the correct paint--ended up using krylon enamel spray for the UV inhibited final coat--we sanded this sucker a lot.) Here is a brief outline of our trials and tribulations.

1. Cutting our own wood-------we did not do this carefully, we did not check our work, and we did not make the outside flat recess narrow enough and at times not deep enough. The result was putting the wood on and off the truck about 4 times.

2. Painting the boards, we used chasis saver satin black and it is tough, one can barely sand this stuff between coats, we applied 3 coats, The 3 coats are what caused some of our problems as this paint is thick and it built up the surfaces of the outside of the wood and the deeper cut line. as a result we had to go back and clean up all these surfaces and the deep cut line.

3. We did the work off the truck with the bed sitting on a motorcycle lift so it made the work easier when tightening the SS bolts (wrong move, leave these loose until you are completely finished)

3a. comment it might be better to install the wood with the bed on the truck, we encountered some alignment issues with the cab and the frame of the truck because we had installed the bed wood and the crossbraces before we moved it to the chasis. This made tightening everything up easier but it also left us wondering how we are going to resolve the cab to bed alignment issues......we have yet to loosen the cab mounting bolts to try and adjust it. (again !!!!!!!! you need wiggle room do not tighten everything up----You need some room to adjust)

4. The wood is installed from the center and on a SWB fleetside these 2 boards were the narrowest ones. (make sure you install all the bolts without tightning, make sure you have a little slop in the outside cuts and that the flat part of the cut is narrower than mar k shows on their website. In this case loose is better and having some wiggle room will really help as you install wood toward the outside of the bed.---the last boards in each corner of the bed is where the error can be absorbed.....but if you leave the boards loose and the grooves loose you can absorb a lot of error before you get to those last boards. (we ended up 1/2 of a bolt hole off where the last SS strip installed, we had to make a recess in each outer board to get them installed)

5. Do not drill any holes in the wood until you are ready to put the rear fenders in place, the inner panel of the bed where the fenders bolt in has a tendency to flex, and if you drill the outside holes before the fenders are bolted in, you will have problems. Do not ask how I know.......

6. Adjust the alignment of the bed to the cab, then tighten the frame bolts first, then tighten all other bolts working from the middle to the outside....after the body, frame, and cab are correct, then set the fenders and drill the outside holes and the holes on the flat flange of the fender .


Hope this helps some, I really could not get pictures of the errors we made just call me if you need some assistance, I really think that I would go ahead and buy my wood next time just to keep from making the same mistake, we saved a lot of money buying locally, but we spent a lot more time than it should have taken getting the errors corrected.


Call if you need help: Kieth 918-446-2245 here are the almost finished pictures....



http://kieth.smugmug.com/Trucks/66-G...407491_vcsTLN8

http://kieth.smugmug.com/Trucks/66-G...997094_G9zBq7N

[KVB]

Keith,

Thanks for that. I just picked up some southern yellow pine this weekend and am going to tackle this job soon. Lots of things to think about.

Ken