Quote:
Originally Posted by Russell Ashley
Dan, you can probably get by with not welding the bed sides since your truck won't be worked out of and the tailgate will most likely always be closed, but that's not how these trucks were intended to be used. Even though there's four bolts on each side holding the bed sides to the rear cross member I doubt that the bed sides would have remained square to the floor for very long under the typical usage that these trucks were subjected to if they weren't welded. The bolts are located at the bottom of the bed sides so a heavy object hitting the top of the bed side would likely knock it out of position especially if the tailgate was down. I would weld it like the factory did it if it were mine, but that's just my opinion. Either way, I'm anxious to see some updates on your truck.
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Hi Russ! Long time no talk.
I spoke with the body man and we both came to the conclusion the welding was just as you said: to keep the sides relatively in alignment after loads of sand or gravel, etc had been dropped in the bed. These trucks lived HARD lives. Mine doesn't appear to have been one of those - my original bedsides barely have any dents in them and the original bed wood was completely intact except for one board if you go back to my early posts! We decided wil will profit the entire bed together once the body work is done on each side. The "fit" of the sides to the rear-most cross member is TIGHT on mine so it'll definitely scrape the new paint unless we relieve that fit a little prior to paint.
Something I forgot to post is I DIDNT have the angle strips removed from the bed sides before blasting. My body man wants to remove them, sandblast where they were and rework where the drilled out spot welds were because without doing that there is rust left behind the angle strips. He's pretty thorough and I'm happy about that. But I think I need to post a separate thread about this to ask some questions.