(Duplicated from unibody forum to get some more eyes on it. Mods, feel free to delete if inappropriate.)

Hello all,

I bought my '61 F250 uni before ever having crawled underneath an unaltered one. I knew to check on the structural integrity of the torque box, but had never seen one, and mistook the much smaller "boxy" rear part of the cab itself for it. Well, it had "mostly" good metal and the price was amenable, so I bought it. I've since seen a somewhat intact uni f250, and realized my torque box is. . . . well. . . . not there. I'm told that previous owners hauled steers in the bed, so I'm assuming it's survived the worst at this point. I've driven it over a thousand miles since I've had it and not noticed any progression of cracks or anything. The right door does take quite the push to latch shut, and popped open on me once. There are some body alignment issues, particularly evident in the right door.


In addition to the torque box being missing, the bed to cab juncture is pretty much a rusty mess.

Of course, I knew all this when I bought it, but I did think the torque box was mostly intact. Dumb mistake, but now I'm a bit more concerned for the truck's continued structural integrity.

I'll let the following pictures speak for themselves.




The newer cross brace is tack welded to the frame.

Here you can see that the front remnant of the original torque box, and the new cross brace rest on the frame. I'm hoping this would indicate that at least the body is resting on the frame and probably maybe won't settle too much?


I'm assuming the torque box was a rusty mess and got cut out when the wood floor was put in.

Note the crack entirely across the back of the cab.

Wood bed. You can see that the remaining bed bottom is slightly sloped inward. I don't think this was the case from the factory. There's a lot of bondo in this bed, from the previous cosmetic "restoration."

It's tough to see, but the left bed rail is slightly lower than the right, making the tailgate slope down to the left just a bit.

So, what to do? It's a nice looking truck, and I'm not using it for heavy hauling. I'd like to be able to carry a few feed sacks from time to time, but that's about it.

My plan is to POR 15 all the rusted places, but wanted to wait in case some welding is the best fix.

Thanks.