3/4 Ton Long to Short & Static Drop Square One

[kitsbeach]

Here's the cuts at the rear of the bed floor

[kitsbeach]

This is left rear bed floor corner from the bottom

Notice the 1/2" extra bed floor sticking out that I am going to beat down later to look like the factory rear edge.

[kitsbeach]

This is right rear bed floor corner from the bottom.

Figures that the piece I needed was rusty and I needed to fix it up a bit.

Clamped it in with vice grips to take a look but would need to fix rust hole.


found some other little scraps that sort of matched the detail needed.


Tacked in place.

[kitsbeach]

Here are the rear bed floor corners from the top before welding.

[kitsbeach]

Tacked it slowly one little bit at a time then eventually was finished and ground it down.

This is left rear bed floor corner. I'd sometimes clamp some copper in behind it to make it easier to weld the gaps.


Getting smooth

[kitsbeach]

I probably put 40 hours into this bed floor but I didn't spend any money!

Seriously I enjoy building things without going out to the parts store or waiting for the UPS truck, but there were a lot of steps to this bed floor and more to come.

[kitsbeach]

Replaced rusty rear bed support with one of the long bed pieces that I patiently removed by grinding out the spot welds.

I just rosette welded through the old spot weld holes.

I wish I remembered all the measurements to put here in this thread.

[kitsbeach]

The cool thing about doing the rear of the bed floor this way is the very rear bed support/tail piece can just be rosette welded on through the old drilled out spot welds. Check the coyote customs youtube for this.



See the 1/2" overhang that I am going to beat down later.


You can see the overhang here better (also my booger welds!).

[kitsbeach]

Here I just beat down the 1/2" overhang. It actually looks pretty good in person even though not every hammer blow was perfect.

[kitsbeach]

Primed.

[kitsbeach]

One bed bolt hole was rusted away so I patched it with a piece from the scrap.












My 40 hour bed floor was finally done other than some seam sealer and a few details.

[kitsbeach]

Here are first cuts on rear of right bedside.

I took 14' out of the front and 5 3/4" out of the rear. The coyote customs guy likes 5 3/4" because the holes line up when you go to bolt your bed back together. I know most guys do 6" so it probably doesn't make a huge difference but I could reuse the imbedded nuts.

[kitsbeach]

Drilled out spot welds of the inner bedside because mine was the kind where you can just cut it off and rosette weld the inner bedside back in (saves tons of welding).




Then I finished cutting the outer bedside. I was a little tight to the corner stake here but it all worked out.


Here are the pieces.

[kitsbeach]

I had to take a little time out to repair the tailgate hinge. The truck I had got the bed from had sat in a field with a canopy on but the door was open and water accumulated back there. Tailgate was junk too.

This was the best time to fix this because it was easier to work while the rear of the bedside was removed.

Big hunk missing where hinge is supposed to bolt on.


Made a little patch to just lap weld on. At this point I was just praying the tailgate would close properly after because this was the maximum of my fabrication capabilities.


Welded a nut on the back of the patch before I welded the patch on.


Here is patch welded in before grinding.


And final patch with some primer on it.

[kitsbeach]

Butt clamped it all together ready to weld




First tacks. Some big gaps at this end made it a bit difficult to weld


I tacked basically one tack at a time and really took my time to avoid warping. I'm actually going to leave a couple of the "scars" proud just for fun since this is somewhat of a patina/bruiser truck.


This is a pic after lots of welding and grinding.


A couple of lessons:

The rear is easier to line up and weld because of all the structure.

It is important to have enough gap so that the pieces are actually welded. Sometimes the gap would shrink and I'd cut it open again with a thin cutting wheel (this happened more at the front than the rear).

It took a long time to fill all my pinholes. I suspect that the pinholes will be the first place this will rust later.

Also while welding it was sometimes hard to believe that the bottom would work out but it did. I just worked an inch at a time and it all lined up.

[kitsbeach]

This is a picture of the left front bedside. There's a lot of stuff on the internet about matching the shape of the top corner so it can match the other piece after the 14" is removed.

It made sense to me to just cut a nice 45 degree cut that would be easier to copy and that is what I did and it worked out well.

See my tape here on the corner just ignores the shape and makes it into an easy cut.

[kitsbeach]

Looks like I didn't take all the pictures I should have of the right front bedside cuts, but I've got a few.

Also notice where I cut along the top of my bedrail. I think Dave Welch cuts over the edge onto the side of the bed but, to me, it was easier to cut through the top. I could see what I was cutting and also preferred to have a scar on the top of the bedrail rather than on the side of the truck.

This is tape for the staggered cut but before I matched it to the edge cut with the template.


This is a template of the front edge that I used to transfer the shape to the back edge.



This picture shows how the shape of the cut was transferred.







It took a bit of fitting and grinding before I was ready to weld.

[kitsbeach]

After a lot of test fitting I started to weld the right front bedside starting at the top stake pocket.


There were some big gaps in some places but I just tacked it the best I could to start.


Starting to make my way down from top to bottom.


This picture shows how the gap was starting to get too small as I welded my way down the side. I actually had some big wedges in the gap to prevent this but things were shrinking a lot as I welded.


Sometimes I would cut the gap back open a bit with a thin cutting disc.

[kitsbeach]

As I made my way down the bedside it got pretty wonky but slowly but surely it all worked out.

[kitsbeach]

After tons of patient tack welding it was starting to come together.

Booger welds.


Patient grinding so not to cause too much heat.


Front edge basically ground smooth.


Right bedside shortened.!