Has anyone gone to the extent of putting an entire bed together from all the new (repro) parts you can get from like LMC or NPD? As in buy the bottom section, sides, tailgate, etc. and then weld it all up. What are your experiances from such, and what do you think labor costs would be for a welder to do that? All the parts seem to be a little over $1K roughly, and it would technically be a brand new bed! I just see so many people saying they cant find a good bed to start a restoration on.

 

It's been said that many of the aftermarket panels are of lesser quality - made from thinner sheetmetal and whatnot... Getting them to all fit together properly might be a bit interesting...

I suppose if a person really wanted to, they could make it happen...

 

Honestly it would be more work then its worth. the parts themselves usually need a little massaging to fit well (no big deal). But by the time you remove all the old pieces your still going to have all the inner structure parts and I'm sure they will have rust on them.

If you have a short bed then you can get a long bed side panel and make it fit pretty easy.
if you have a long bed I would suggest purchasing a nice south west bed. You can usually find them for a few hundred bucks.

 

you could also get a '96 bed for just the inside parts. I'm gonna try my hand soon. I'm gonna shorten a 78 long bed, put in a '84 front bed wall, and patch the floor with panels from my '74 scrap bed.

 

IMHO, you would be further ahead to find a rust-free bed from a dealer of old truck parts. You would have roughly the same money involved in buying a "southern" truck bed ($1000 and up). I would rather have Ford steel then some third-world junk stamped out by some mouth breather in another country.

Or you could just try and find a whole truck with a good bed to be a donor.

 

I have done this before. It was a LOAD of work but it can be done if you take your time. I used a couple late 90's beds for the basic structure, removed all of the bed skin and started replacing with new dentside skin. I'm not sure that I would ever do it again but it can be done. Keep in mind that everything has to be custom fabricated for good fitment and you need a majority of your original bed to get measurments off of. I believe it took me almost a year to get it done and right but the results were well worth it. BTW, here in the rust belt, coming across a good bed is very difficult and at the time, I was not able to afford to buy one that was in good shape and close enough to go get on a weekend.

 

I was parting out a 79 supercab that had a bed done this way, it was all bolted together. You can buy the bedsides with the inner parts allready, the only part I was not sure of were the tailgate posts. The bed I sold was very solid, had some rust, but not at all like the rest of the truck, looked pretty good though, could not tell it was not factory other then the bolts. Just paint it all with some good rust stopping paint before you put it together.