I got one bedside on just to mockup its location-I still need to cut about 8" off the front of it and then splice, but the rear wheel looks to be in a pretty good location. Once I get the bed into final position and get some weight back on the truck, I'm figuring the suspension will drop another 1.5"-2".
Chuck, I wanted the metal bed for the same reasons as you. I actually got the Idea from BlueJeep, who has a more detailed writeup on the process. He has a couple postings on this thread, so you can find his build thread if you want. Mine won't be exactly the way he did it, but I think all of these are different and require some adaptation.