How I've spent my holiday weekend in the garage...

Well, I've finally decided to start building a bed floor for my truck. Let me preface this by saying that this is the first time I've attempted any work like this on this scale. So all opinions and suggestions are welcome.

Here is a picture of the truck I'm working on. It's a '65 F100 on a '73 Torino chassis. This work was performed by the previous owner.



Here's is how the bed looked when I got the truck. This is after I removed the welded in Torino gas tank.



Here we have a nice and crusty 66 F100 bed that will donate some of the more vital pieces needed to finish my 65's bed. Also the bed lifter I made so I could use my engine hoist to remove it is still sitting in it.



So I started by removing the pieces that the PO left on the bed sides. I then cut the wheel tub out of the '66 bed and trimmed it to fit mine. The wheel wells will be ~1 1/2" higher in the bed to allow for wheel travel. I then fabbed up a new section to go between the tailcate and the wheel well. It's pretty much a simple pan with a curve on one end. The front of the wheel well I added another floor section this time butt welded to the existing metal. These pieces were actually done twice due to my over zealous welding and the warpage that followed. All said it was a good learning experience.







In this shot you can see the front bed subframe and the rear frame section I built. I had done this earlier so the bed could be bolted to the truck not welded. You can also see the '65 Mustang gas tank as well.



The '66 bed will also be donated some of it's external sheet metal as well. Any advice on cutting out and replacing panels such as below would be greatly appreciated. Once the bed is complete, it along with a few other pieces are going to be media blasted to prepare for some garage sprayed paint.



Thanks for looking,
Curtis

 

right on bro, that truck looks tough!

does the license plate mean anything or was that just a coincidence?...

 

did the truck just drop onto the chassis or did it need to be stretch or shortened. the truck is really cool looking and you are doing a great job. on cutting your panels out i would cut along the body line so when you welded into the other bed your warpage will be down to a minuimn and body work will be easy along the body line. just my two cents

 

hey man what part of mcdonough are you in..im on jodeco rd..near the railroad tracks

 

Thanks for the compliments.

Ron:
The bed has been moved forward to center the rear wheels. It also has the Torino floor and 3/4 of the firewall in it. After looking at the work involved it doesn't appear to be too difficult a swap. I have seen some other's like this that were on late 80's Crown Vic frames and looked nice. Thanks for the advice on the patch panels. That does make sense.

TredBoy:
The plate doesn't mean anything but after looking at it, it's kinda funny.

Slamdpup:
I live off of New Hope. Hit me up with a PM and maybe we can get together.

 

Thanks for the info on the cab part. keep us posted on the progress on that bitchin truck.

 

Porkshop would love this thread, looks awesome man.

 

Well, some more progress has been made so I thought I would update this thread.

I cut out the bad upper bed corner to replace it with the one off the crusty bed.



While doing this I learned a very valuable lesson. Strip everything before cutting. Notice in this picture the old weld repair below the tail light. If I had stripped everything first I could have taken more out of the other truck. It's nothing that filler won't hide again.



I also replaced the lower bedside with a piece off of the blue bomb. It turned out much better than I thought. This piece had 1/8"+ of bondo on it hiding a crease. I've almost got the crease hammered out so primer alone should hide it.



Unfortunately, I'm still in need of some lower bed corners to replace the crunched units on my bed. The ones on the other truck are too rusty. I've thought about cutting them off and hammering them on a bag. Then using a planishing hammer to smooth them back out. Niether of which are tools that I own or feel that I could keep them the same shape to put them back on. So the search for replacements continues.



The bed now only needs the center section fabbed up and it will be ready to media blast. My chinese break wants no part of a 48" piece of 18 gauge. So this weekend I'm going to visit my dad in Ohio and we'll make it at his sheetmetal shop.

Next up is putting a repop 64 core support and inner fenders out of the blue 66 on the truck and mounting them up to the Torino Chassis.

I almost forgot. There's a rear bumper on the truck now. '66 bumper brackets and a '73+ rear bumper worked out perfect for the rear frame section I built.



Thanks for looking,
Curtis