Well I had a three day weekend (thanks veterans of all services, including my son!)

So I took the opportunity to work on the beast again

The tail panel sections were going to need to be replaced, or at least heavily repaired so.........we ( I am not the welder, lol) cut off the old tail panels that hold the tail lights on and bought some really good ones from the junk yard.

I had to grind off the welds on the junk yard pieces and then drill out the spot welds on the existing bed pieces after I chopped em off.

Here are a couple of pics from Monday

Here are the dented pieces I cut off, and the new ones, which I cleaned prepped and POR 15, as they will never see the light of day again lol





And the section behind the tail panels




Marine clean, Prep then POR 15





The plan is to weld the new pieces on and eliminate the seam that exists on the 57 trucks
If you look at the picture above of the bed you can see the bed has been raised 4 inches and the bedsides are all the same height. A stock tailgate is lower than the bedsides on a stocker.

And you cant see but the tailgate has been cut so that it will be flush and the hinge is a modern style mount...more pics to come later

Stay tuned

Ryan