Stepside Assembly

[71RULES!]

HI. does anyone have any kind of assembly guide for putting together the step side beds on these? Mine is a 71 and just got back all the pieces from the paint shop. Wondering if there is any guidelines like "do this first" so i don't have to take it apart 10 times like i did when i reinstalled all the hardware into the doors. I've got that procedure down now.

Thanks

[DorianB]

When I did mine, it was pretty straight forward, I guess it depends on if you are building the bed on the truck, or building it in one location, then moving it onto the truck. If you have a strong back, you could likely get away with the bed sidewall and fender and step assembled as one whole "side" and then moving it to the truck.

The bed floor will be annoying (if wood) only as there are around 96 bolts or so in total that need to be cranked down and you really need one person holding the bolt in place while the other person tightens it from below) Possible way to get around this by putting each board in one at a time and attaching the metal strips as you go instead of putting all the wood in and doing them all at the same time.

When I built mine, I pre-built the floor on the cross braces (Be careful, LMC catalog shows two more braces than you should have), laid that on the truck, then put both the front and back in place. Once those were on, I had two people hold the side assemblies up and I bolted em together

[71RULES!]

Thanks DB. I don't have the wood kit yet, and have not decided who to order that from either. However I need to get the bed on the truck because it's sitting in front of my house and the City does not like disassembled vehicles sitting around. I already got a 10 day notice from the city when i was taking it apart for painting. Don't want to get another one.
I just need to get the bed on it for now. Even if that means i'll have to disassemble it again to put the wood in.
I was thinking of getting some very thin weatherstripping tape from the HW store and using that between the metal to metal parts. Nothing that would be seen, but just sort of a gasket to keep them from grinding together creating a place for rust to start.

[Shaky]

If you scroll down to the "BED INSTALLATION" section at Mar-K's website they have some instructions:

http://www.mar-k.com/installation_hints.html

[71RULES!]

Originally Posted by Shaky

If you scroll down to the "BED INSTALLATION" section at Mar-K's website they have some instructions:

http://www.mar-k.com/installation_hints.html

Fantastic resource! This is exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks Shaky