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BED CAPS

Now I started venturing into the great unknown and coloring outside the lines. I decided to fab the middle portion of the bed caps and closeouts. When the side panels were cut out by the previous owner the side collapsed and deformed a bit so prior to reestablishing the side contour local to the cut I had to use some wood boards to push the remaining side panel back into shape. I then laid a piece of 1x6 poplar & traced the contour onto it from the panel truck and then laid out the inner profile to create a wooden buck to form the upper cap. I rounded the edges of the buck so that I could hammer form the edge of the flat metal to create the caps. I used the same form board/buck for both sides so I could keep the contours between LH & RH as symmetric as possible.

Once I formed both sides then I went ahead and welded these hammer-formed caps to the outer skin panel of the truck using various angle iron and multiple 2x4's and such to make sure they were relatively straight/even at this point.

I also needed some support structure within this span. So I decided to make some sheet metal ribs to space longitudinally. I really didn't take any good pics of these but I did find one in a larger pic so I zoomed up on it and cropped it. They standout in the photos because they are copper colored due to the weld-thru primer on the flanges. I again made some wood bucks for these much the same as my upper cap buck (multi-use for LH & RH). They were flanged on the bottom surface to plug weld to the horizontal portion of the existing bed structure, the inner flange is contoured to match the inner contour of the existing bed as if it continued up (and will be plug welded to the new inner panel) and the outer flange is an approx .25” offset inside of the outer skin panel. The outer skin will not be welded to this rib, this flange only provides stiffness to the rib. I used a separate small angle at the top surface of the rib to fit under the the bed cap so I could place the rib in the void and float the position to maintain some degree of flatness on the cap installation. I also created a separate inner flange to mount on the opposite side of the rib (that matched contour-wise the integral flange of the rib) so that I would have plenty to plug weld the inner panel .

After the top cap and ribs were installed then I took some blue painters tape and created a flat pattern of the closeout panels that I needed to cut for the new inner panels. (I didn't have any pics of this but I do the same thing later when I close out the back portion and there are pics of that in the future). I then plug welded these inner panels (after going thru the ol' knee brake) to the ribs. Next I butt welded around the perimeter of the panels, and ground the weld flat and that was that.