Originally posted by Larry Bear:
My bed has been out of alignment causing a tire to rub up against an inner fender.
The current bedwood is rotted so the bed to frame bolts are sitting in questionable wood and were a bit loosy goosy.
I ground off the heads last night and pulled the six bolts off. I need to install new bolts in a temp fashion until I replace the bed. And the new bolts will have to be sitting directly on the cross sill. Now I have a couple of questions:
1) Do I need rubber pads? There were none... Mar-K catalog shows 8 - why 8 if there are only 6 bolts??
2) Where do the rubber pads go? The technical info page on Mar-K (Bed Mounting Information) has some glitch and only shows a cross section illustration for F**d....
3) Anyone ever drill a hole all the way thru the wood so the bolt directly sits on the cross sill ... then put a wooden plug in the bedwood to hide the hole?? Any reason why that won't work?
Thanks in advance for any help!
1)You should have 8 bed to frame bolts in the 56 short stepside bed.
2)Sorry about the glitch. I have emailed you a copy of the correct file. Webmaster will correct the problem directly. The pads go between the cross sill and the frame.
3)This will work. You would basically be bolting the cross sills to the frame and attaching the bed to the cross sills. Make sure the cross sills are securely fastened to the angle strips, with a piece of good 3/4 wood between cross sill and angle strip at each cross sill.
Instead of the wooden plug, we often make bed wood with hidden mounting holes by milling a cavity on the bottom side of the wood where the bolt goes and providing bolts for bolting the cross sill to the frame as you propose. The wood just lays over the bolts and is secured to the cross sills by the bed strips.
When the wood starts to deteriorate, things can get real loose and allow the bed to move around. Bolting the cross sills directly to the frame should make it secure until you can replace the wood.
Mar-Ktech
