I removed my front panel rod. I’m not sure if you’re in bare steel or not, but this is what I did. My panel was home built, so I drilled a 1/4” hole in a frost plug, bolted a 1/4 bolt through it with a nut, welded the nut on the backside, removed bolt, then plug welded the frost plug into the upper front panel tube. Viola, no more 4’ rod flopping around inside. It makes it so much easier to assemble the front portion of the bed.
