Long bed floor

[ChevyRacefan]

Hello. lurked for a long time, but have not found an answer to this question.
Can a long bed be driven with just the wood floor metal braces and no wood?
It has a metal floor ATM .
Looking at either cutting the braces out of the metal floor, and running with no floor, just braces.
Or if drilling out all the spot welds is more costly than just buying a wood floor bed braces and using them with no floor.
After build gets to everything fitted, up at the front of bed, I will fab up a rear half floor out of fiberglass.
Just not sure if you need the floor to hold the bed together and keep it square.
Thanks, for your time.

[bigmac73]

I do not see why not.
the bed floor is just that a floor , as long as the braces and framing are tight and squared correctly.
Years ago my uncle had a 67 that had a rotted bed floor and he just threw in plywood to cover the massive holes .

[rpmgroup]

The cross sills are different from metal bed to a wood bed, also the front panel is different on the lower lip. Yes you can just run the cross sills from a metal bed, but that would be a lot of spot welds.