Time for a major update! The bed wood is completely installed and the bed is permanently mounted to the frame! Quite the transformation! The first pic shows the truck bed when I got the truck. There was no wood, just two smaller sheets of galvanized metal, pop riveted to the frame and each other. The angle strips were covered over with plain angle iron and the underlying support structure was made of a few pieces of rough oak. Repairs included replacing both the front and rear metal parts of the bed, fixing the fender mounting holes on the driver side and repairing the tailgate. New angle strips were bolted to the bedsides and new cross support pieces were installed. New bed wood was purchased from one of our vendors, along with the hardware packs to mount the boards and wooden blocks to mount the bed to the frame. The second Pic roughly recreates the first one and shows the completed work. The board spacing did get a little off while I was working underneath. I think I put too much side pressure on the bolts and shifted some of the boards. For right now, they'll stay a little cattywampus. The third pic is showing how i made the holes for the eccentric washers. I took some luan and used the forstner bit to drill completely through it. Then, marked for my washer and followed the instructions by drilling a 1/8" hole completely through. Then measuring 3/16" from the hole. Then I used the luan as a guide, so that the forstner bit wouldn't walk out of position. The luan made for a repeatable process. My issue was my rookie woodworking mistake. Look closely and you'll see two mistakes. I'll fix them and move on. All in all I'm really happy with how it turned out. I went with the black stain to more closely resemble what the bed would have looked like when new. So, new wood, wear strips and front and rear sheet metal married to original bedsides. To me, its a reasonable compromise and I kept as much original material as was possible. Next up, I need to finish the driver side fender repairs. I'm about 3/4 of the way done with those repairs.
