Im gonna get the bed out soon for the 51. The bed actually came off of a 49 which i liked the step out design better, it has more support and looks better in my opinion, but anyways i am building a driver and i want it to look as good as possible. It has the steel floor but in the right front corner about 8inx8in is rotted out. Should I find another bed and patch it? should i just cut out that floor and put in thick flat piece of steel? I am not going to put the nice wood floor, because then i will be scared to haul anything, but if I paint a new steel floor i wont want to put anything in it either. So i guess what im getting at is should i paint it and put a mat in it or do the bed liner just on the floor? The front panel and rear crossmemeber are in bad shape so I was going to put in new ones so it would not be too much more work to take out that steel floor....

 

I would patch the steel floor & paint it.If you put a rubber mat in the bed
it will just cover the bottom & you will want to cover the sides also
if you are going to haul something in it.just my opinion Bob

 

I think it's MAC's that has a steel patch panel for the bed... This is what I'm going to on mine