I have an '85 F-150 regular cab, short bed. The beds real rusty, so I plan on building a wooden flat bed for it. If anyone has done this before and could give me pointers that would be great. My main concern is how my dual tanks will work. Thanks.

 

By doing a search for wood flatbed it returned 381 results. I'm not going to take the time to give you all of them, but I have put some links below to a few threads related to this already.

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...=wood+flatbed+

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...=wood+flatbed+

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...=wood+flatbed+

 

Wow, this should be interesting, i also have an 85 f150 with standard cab, but long bed. We can kinda go over problems and steps together. I bet my bed has alot more rust on it than yours! I figured i can do it for under 100$$ using pressure treated wood. I figured for my area that using 2x10's for the main bed will be the cheapest route.

 

building one for my f250 81, got some pictures, let me know if you want a set, can email them out if you like. it is .120 wall main spars, and .083 cross spars. square tube of course. so far steel has me 110, and going to marine ply it with 1/2 t&g birch. it was a whole lot cheaper than the 2x6 or 2x10.

Kurt

 

Sounds good man, send me some pictures. My email is dcfenlon@mtu.edu. Thanks alot....
Dave

 

Uh, sorry about that, the site blocked my email for security reasons...I'll try this:
My email address is dcfenlon @mtu.edu without the space inbetween. Thanks again,
Dave

 

I built one for an older Ford that I had. i went a bit on the exotic side from the norm. I used 2 1/2 inch channel iron, 2 inch square tubing, and built a frame (similar to building a utility trailor, which is what I borrowed the pattern from, with minor mods to it. I then welded this all together, allowing the square tubing to be sunk enough(cross braces) to allow the 2x6's to fit flush with the top of the channel iron(sides and rear plate) This allowed me to also install corner marker lights, one orange(front sides) and one red(rear sides) within the channel(channel facing the outside for inset mounting of lights) and your standard reds in each corner and 3 in the center.(rear) I used carriage bolts to attach the lumber, and counter sunk the heads, levelled the bed with chunks of 4x4 treated wood, and u-bolts to attach it to the frame. From there you can add a head-ache rack, side rails, and whatever else. You can even add stake holes and allow the use of stake-side rails for when you need to have sides on it to make it taller to hold your load in, and so on. You can even get imaginative enough to mount a hydraulic set-up on it and make it a tilt bed. Use your imagination on this one, it'll lend to some interesting mods.