Thanks for the comment. The truck should be on the road next Monday for the first time in 6 years.
1. Unfortunately, mine did not come from MarK. I had no idea about his company before I purchased the bed sides and wood from Jim Carter. I faced a lot of challenges as the bed sides did not have the bolt holes for the fenders pre drilled, and I felt the manufacturing was pretty rough. There were wrinkles on the stake pocket. I think you can see them in the video on the passenger side. I fixed the driver side but still need to address it on the passenger side. the bed wood had no pre drilled holes or the offset counter holes for the washers, and there were no instructions whatsoever. As you saw in the video I had to cut a shallow dado on the end boards so the angle bracket would sit correctly. I also had to trim them on my jointer.
I heard that MarK offers a kit with much less frustration involved!
2. I have heard, and I did consider, setting up the wood and cross sills on a couple of stands and bolting the wood and strips together. The problem I see in that is you then have to lift it into place and it will most likely be out of alignment. And that is the hardest part about this whole project is lining up the holes. I had to enlarge the holes on the sills and frame to get it all to work. Seems easier to just do it on the truck. If you have a low riding 2 wheel drive truck, it seems to make sense to jack up the entire truck as far as you can to access the bolts.
All I can say is that you should put it together before you paint ANYTHING because you can bet, it won't fit the first time and you will need to cut and trim the wood. I installed it once when everything was raw, then once when the wood was painted because I was worried that the coats of paint would throw off the alignment. The third and final time went pretty smooth as you can see. I did it in a day.
