At the car show the other day I saw a truck with the black bedliner on the inside of the bed. The stock fender bolts had been replaced with stainless steel hex head bolts. The owner was not around. It looked great and since I have several broken bolts I want to do it. The problem I see is that the stock bolts have a shoulder on the inside of the bed. I can't see a way or a power tool to grind the shoulder off without creating a lot of bodywork issues. Anyone done it? Hints, pictures? Thanks........

 

Here is a link to a thread on the H.A.M.B. on how to replace the rear fender bolts the correct way. You need to scroll down to #36. The included pictures are very informative and helpful.

Projects - '48 - '52 F1/2/3: Are these rear fender bolts "bolts"? How to remove? | Page 2 | The H.A.M.B.

I don't know if there is a thread here equal to this one. You need to bookmark this one so you can refer back to it.

Philip

 

I agree that looks about the best way to do it and better than the way I would have tried. Now I need to decide if I have the "sticktoitiveness" to do it X20. Thanks for the info.

 

I scored the head of the bolt with a cut-off wheel.




Grabbed the other side with locking pliers and wiggled back and forth, until it broke out.




Then cleaned up the spot welds with a chisel and a flap wheel. The new bolt head covers the area. I ground out a square profile to match the shoulder of the new flat headed bolts.




I don't have a close up of the bolt heads, but here's the finished product.

 

Beautiful truck! I started out trying the chisel route and soon found out my sheet metal was going to deform. I used a grinder and a disk sander and took the shoulder off of the inside. The bolts fell right out. There was a little more collateral damage in the immediate area of the grinding. Easier for me to fix than warped sheet metal. I would have never tried this without all of your input. And if I did I would always be thinking there must be a better way. Thanks to all.

 

A word of warning. While inside the bed with the sander running I began to wonder if the PO did good prep work before painting. I'm down to bare metal and have, how do you say, "mission creep".

 

I don't have any photos, but I ended up grinding the flat parts of the heads down till the nuts popped off. I do like way Brent tackled it. I will keep that in the memory bank for the future.

 

I had to remove all of my bolts as I had to move my rear fenders forward 3.5" do to PO frame mods. I do not like the method suggested on the H.A.M.B. link of welding from the fender side as you stand a good chance of boogerijng up the last part of the threads which means you can't get the fender snugged up to the box side. Brent's method looks like it would work better.

I decided to use the method that you saw of using buttonhead SS hex bolts. The only drawback is that unless you have really long arms you need someone on the inside to hold the wrench. Also if you use SS nuts and washers be sure to use anti-seize compound on the threads of each bolt.