A friend with a body shop asked me to help assemble a bed on a 66 short stepside - this is because i built the bed on my 56 and they are nearly identical (I only have my 55-59 assembly manual to refer to). The bed went together without much fuss. However there is something amiss with the sill/frame interface. After placing the bed on the frame, it high-centers on the "reinforcement" strip that i placed in the center of the bed (is this correct location for this?). All the rest of the mounting locations then sit about 1" above their frame mounting points as if a spacer of this thickness is needed. All the sills are new from one of the major/popular vendors, and I notice that some of the other suppliers I checked for reference do not carry cross-sills for this series - leading me to believe that perhaps the cross sills obtained are 'universal" or intended to require modification.
In their "Bed Side Interchangeability" article, MAR-K says for 64-66 that "The cross sills have a 1" tall spacer welded at each bed-to-frame bolt location". The cross sills bought for this project have no such welded spacer - most likely explaining my problem. I can get this to work if I remove the "reinforcement" cross-strip or add a spacer at the 8 mounting points..
I hope one of the 60-66 guys can make sense of what i said here and make a recommendation. Thanks for any help.
