Bed wood sketch

[jdl71]

Originally Posted by oem4me

Mine is too tight side to side. The skid strips fit too snuggly in the grooves between boards. Ends are ok at about 1/8" gap each end. Wood does not move too much in length anyway. I believe the widths I came up with measuring factory examples were each 1/16" wider that what GMC Pauls calls out. That 1/16" per board would've given me a bit more room for movement.
What I did was remove and replace half of the boards at a time. I had no help, so lifting the bed off seemed impossible, or at least very difficult. So, after pulling one half of the wood out and painstakingly removing all the rusted nuts (several perimeter bolts had to be cut) I started at the side and worked inward toward the middle. It became obvious when I got near middle that I was crowding the bolts between boards a bit. At that point I should've stopped and ripped each board down a smidge, widened the grooves, and the repainted all of them. But I wanted them in and done, and just put them in. I may still take them out and do that someday, we'll see. It actually fits well and looks good now, but I know there is no stopping wood from expanding.

That’s right you didn’t have the chart when you did yours. It looks great to me hopefully you can leave it as is.