66 Styleside Bed Plans or Am I Crazy to Try This?
 

Good Morning Gentlemen,

I've got a '66 Styleside longbed with a bed floor that I can't really save. The pictures below don't do it justice, but if I put a worklight below it and shine through it, it looks like a star projector on the shop ceiling. That condition, plus the extra holes drilled all over it for a fifth wheel mount are telling me that I've got to do something.

So after some serious looking and more than two beers last night, I've hit upon a plan and I wanted to know if I'm crazy for even trying this (part of me knows how this will be answered).

I'm going to remove my center ribbed bed floor off the cross members but leave about an inch and a half between the wheel wells. For the flat panels that bridge the tubs to the front and back of the bed, I'll do something similar all around - remove all put about an 1.5" around the outside edge.

I'm going to come back on these flat panels with treadplate - aluminum or steel yet to be decided - and bolt these panels down with carriage bolts through that 1.5"lip. This is going to raise my height on these areas a bit, but that's okay, because I'm going to go with a longbed stepside wood bed kit between the wheel wells with the first metal strip running right at the wells and lapping over the treadplate (potentially with a groove machined into the plate to catch the lip from the strip).

I'm planning on using the 'hidden bolt' style metal strips because that will give me more flexibility on where I can bolt it all to the crossmembers.

So, what have I not thought of? Are the crossmember profiles too different between the bed types for this to work without replacing crossmembers? Was the longbed stepside not 8' like the styleside is? Am I misjudging the height of it all or the difficulty in removing the sheet from the crossmembers?

Thank you all! If I really do try this, I'm thinking of a series of YouTube videos to help us all (if it would be a help and I can pull the damn thing off).

I've been considering a very similar idea. My truck is already lowered and the diff has made contact with the bed floor at some point, producing a small hump in the bed floor. My intent was to raise the floor 2-3 inches to solve the diff clearance issue. I've seen where some are cutting the floor out of a more recent pickup, but I really like the wood floor idea.

Mike

One of those restoration genre type shows on Velocity bought a new floor for a???(sorry can't remember) and did exactly that. I wanna say it was a mid-80's truck, and may not have been Ford but matched the original rib spacing.

I've seen you comment to that effect in another thread so I'm curious how bad that bed hump looks.

I think I'm going to lay out the cuts tomorrow in tape and snag some pictures to better conceptualize it all. One thing that I was wondering as well, is there any sort of heat shielding that I need to consider from the exhaust?

Rest assured, I'm going to take notes on this as I go through my research as well as detailed costing notes for those that come later.

I want to say it was for a chevy bed floor.


Now there is a post in one of the truck forums that said there is a Co. that makes a ribbed floor just cant remember who or where that post is.


Now my take on my 81 flare side bed floor. This started from the factory as wood floor. One of the PO replace the cross beams with square tubing and wood planks that looked like hell. When I started pricing out to fix this it turned out it was not going to happen any time soon. Just the cross beams was about $1000.


So I have this LB style side parts truck with a good ribbed metal bed floor and 1 side caved in from a roll over. A little measuring and the plan was to use the style side metal ribbed floor in place of the wood one and bolt the flare sides to it like the factory did to the wood.


I had to make the floor shorter (front end) and move 2 of the front cross beams to fit the SB trucks frame. I also have to remove about 2" at the rear to fit the flare side rear panel so I can use the stock tale gate.
Pictures start here
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/n...ply&p=17747760


But will post some
trimming the bed
http://cars.grantskingdom.com/var/re...021_173642.jpg
http://cars.grantskingdom.com/var/re...022_074843.jpg
http://cars.grantskingdom.com/var/re...022_074935.jpg
up on end reworking the cross beams
http://cars.grantskingdom.com/var/re...028_112716.jpg
bed sides sitting on floor still needs more trimming
http://cars.grantskingdom.com/var/re...028_200718.jpg
http://cars.grantskingdom.com/var/re...028_200041.jpg
http://cars.grantskingdom.com/var/re...028_200338.jpg
http://cars.grantskingdom.com/var/re...104_133100.jpg
The floor still needs a little more trimming before I call it done and able to bolt the sides back on but it will look like a factory ribbed metal floor flare side truck when done.


Hope that gives some the "kick start" they need to do their project floor.
Dave ----

Why not just replace the bed floor and wheel tubs with new? They are readily avail . . Reproduction pieces are made.

A bit more work would be to replace with a late model floor. (done it numerous times)

I think the price diff between a repo floor and doing it any other way would be made up in resale when that time comes.

I just sold a nice 8' floor for a couple hundred bucks. Cost him 150.00 to ship

Are you sure?
 

Can you tell me who pops these floors because I can't find them showing as listed for a '66. They are there for '67 but not the '66.

Video walk through
 

I did a bit of work last night on this. Took a quick video for a walk through of what my plans are:


Thoughts?

So, I started removing some of the rusty floor. Took a video walking through the plans, and then showing the results, what I've learned, and the tools that I used.

<https://youtu.be/qTL7qEtvOzw>

Sheet metal is out
 

Alright - I got all the rusty sheet metal out late last week. Think this plan is going to work: