Ok, WE b OLD I will try to pick up the pace. But I don't want the story to catch the truck until I'm done so you're just going to have to hang in there.
With the deck in place, it was on to the exterior facade. I wanted the cab to somehow blend right into the back so it all kind of flow from front to back. I started by taking some tube steel and welding it to the deck perimeter where I wanted an access door. I wanted it so that it would line up with where the front wheels of what I was hauling would be so I could get to the front wheels and get the straps on them. I'm too big and old to be trying to squeeze in between the car and the sidewalls. I left them long so I could cut them to length when I figured out the final shape.
I worked my way around the deck putting 1 1/2" X 2" tube steel about every 4' or at each start or finish of a transition. I turned then so they would flush out with the 2" deck rail. When I finished working my way around both sides and the front, I stood next to the truck and reached over the side to see what a comfortable height was to work over hooking up straps to the rear wheels of a car being hauled. That gave me a starting point for the slope of the sides. Then I welded a 20' piece of 2" X 1/4" flat bar across the back end of the 2" X 6" deck rail sticking 20' up in the air that I could bend down to the shape I wanted. To keep it from kinking at the first sharp radius I clamped a piece of 12" steel pipe to the top of the frame rail so the flat bar would bend around it in a nice tight radius. From there I worked my way forward until I got the shape I wanted and tied it into the radius at the front. With the first side complete I did my best to match the other side. The front I ran flat except where I stepped it to not block the rear window.
When this was complete, and I had the shape down I needed to infill the frame to have something to attach the skin to. I welded 1" X 1" tube steel to each side of the 1 1/2" X 2" tube steel and added more 1" X 1" tube steel between them at 16" on center flush to the exterior face. This would allow me to install plywood between the 2" vertical post and not encroach into the hoist space.
Below the deck I continued the radius on the front corners, and I decided I wasn't going to try to build the under-deck toolboxes myself. So I went through the different manufacturers catalogs and figured out what sizes would fit the available spaces. If I used 18" tall by 18" deep boxes it would still give me good ground clearance and fit between the exterior face and the frame. It worked out I could fit three 18' X 18' X 24" and one 18" X 18" X 60" boxes. That would give me plenty of storage space, so I framed those areas in and built arched wheel wells at the rear axles.
With that done I was ready to start skinning the exterior. COCOE
