46 Power Wagon Restoration pt. 2

[W_A_Watson_II]

Yea, anything smaller than a 36 looks small, and even at 36" you always want more to full out the wheel wells.

My brother has 37's on his M37 and they look pretty good on it. http://m37.wawii.com/DLW-80049099/im...6_NewTires.jpg

[Todd M]

Your truck looks good and I enjoy the updates of all your work. It is excellent and I wish I only could do the same.

[Desoto61]

Thanks for the kind words. I'm definitely going to 37's next time, if I'll try to sell off the 35s or just run them out I don't know but plenty of other things to get done in the mean time.

Had an ABS sensor in my car go, and the weather here has been kind of crazy, so the goal was to use my garage for maintenance for a change. To accomplish that I drilled a set of holes for some carriage bolts to hold everything in place, and figured out a way to re-connect the battery in the bed, and re-mounted the spare to get it out of my way. Then fired everything up and played musical cars.

Definitely a big change in the look, not sure if it's the angle or the shape but it makes the truck look so much longer, even though there's little overhang on that bed.

As a side note it was really nice being able to use the lift for it's intended purpose, got a bunch of maintenance done on the car out of the cold weather without having to lay on the ground and all my tools nearby.

Before the rain came I got the truck back in the garage and before I lifted the bed off (from the bottom this time) I laid out and drilled the rest of the mounting holes. At some point I'll need to turn the round holes square, but in my typical fashion I'm using lots of pretty big bolts, but those large D-ring shackles in the back are tied to the bed, not the frame, so if I want to use them eight 1/2" bolts should hopefully be enough.

I removed the filler neck and lifted the bed, made sure I had marked out the location and installed a patch panel then cut a new hole for the filler, then drilled and tapped the mounting bolt holes. Last little task was to lay out and drill the holes in the rear bumper for the trailer wiring plug.

Putting the spare back showed me that there's no room for a stake pocket on that side, which means they will have to go on the inside of the bed, which will be one of my next tasks along with making some round holes square.

[gyman98]

Looks good! I like it!

[CSCameron]

Really nice! I love the look of that bed on these trucks.

Clark

[defdes]

Any idea on the weight of that bed? I love the shape.

[Desoto61]

Thanks. I posted a few back that I did some quick math based around the weight per sq. ft. of 3/16" diamond plate and rounded up, based on that I'm between 800 and 1000 lbs would be my guess. Definitely settles the back end when it's on.

Managed to make all my round holes square for the carriage bolts holding the bed on. Determined the easiest way was to lift the bed off and drill the hole 1/16" larger than the bolt shank, then I used a jig-saw with a metal blade to nibble the corners out and just touched them up with a file. Worked well and was much quicker than trying to file them all square. Only had one that I got a little carried away and the bolt is a little loose, but that's not a problem.

Next are some stake pockets, I want the option of being able to install a ladder rack or similar accessory in the bed for future use.

[gyman98]

These are the measurements of the first gen stake pockets if you are interested. The last picture is the one I completed

[Desoto61]

Thanks, but like most things on this truck the factory setup isn't going to work. Mainly because I can't fit a pocket in the front passenger corner due to the spare tire, so I'll need to mount some sort of stake pocket inside the bed.

I bought a set of 1/4" plate universal stake pockets online, but have considered just installing some smaller square tube. The trick is there's an inside lip on the bed where that top rail is mounted. I want to keep the rail for obvious reasons, whatever I build has to be spaced out from the bed wall.

The other picture is the trailer wiring connector, I couldn't fit the picture in my previous post.

[aeblank]

What about moving the tire outboard enough for the stake pocket? It'll still be inside the width of the fender.

[Desoto61]

What about moving the tire outboard enough for the stake pocket? It'll still be inside the width of the fender.

Not really an option. This truck has the cast arm that bolts to the frame and holds the tire. You'd have to space that out over 2" at either the frame or tire end. There's already extra bracing on the frame to support the lever arm that tire becomes on the frame, and the new tires are already probably heavier than the original tires, and that arm isn't light in itself.

[Desoto61]

Making progress, always slower than I'd like, but getting close to getting the metal work on the bed done.

Needed some way to hold the tailgate open. For the bed side I cut some square tubing to space it from the side of the bed like the latch pins. I welded a cap on the end and drilled and tapped it for a bolt. A few gussets and then I welded some nuts on the inside edges of the tailgate for a bolt, a bit of chain and that's done.

The stake pockets were universal units I got online. A pack of 8 was only slightly more expensive than the 4 I needed, and worked out in the end. Since I couldn't mount them on the outside of the bed I needed to space them off the inside to clear the top rail. It just happened to be the same thickness as the stake pockets, so I welded one pocket on top of another as a spacer and welded both to the bed side and welded a stop on the bottom with some scrap steel. I will probably drill them for some pins in case I want to lock whatever it is in place.

[Desoto61]

The rear skin of the tailgate was an interesting problem. If I weld it onto the outside I'll need access openings to get at the latches and such, plus how to properly paint and protect the inside. Access panels on the inside of the tailgate will give dirt and such an entry point and still would make protecting the interior tricky.

So I decided that I'm going to install the exterior panel with a bunch of button head bolts. It will kind of look like rivets, and allow somewhat easy access should I need access or it gets damaged. However that means drilling and tapping a lot of holes. To do that I needed a mounting surface, so I welded some bar stock around the perimiter as a bolting surface and then started drilling and tapping holes.

The bottom was is a little trickier because of the hinges, I made relief cuts and then worked each section down with some clamps so I could drill them and bolt it down. I'll need to finish trimming and add some pieces to cover those cuts, and the reliefs for the D-rings. Only problem is that some of my holes ran into some of the welds that hold the lip in place and they do not want to drill, have to figure out a solution for those spots.

[Desoto61]

Getting closer

Kind of lazy yesterday but still making progress. I marked out and started cutting the hole for the handle. It was a bit tricky to template the opening for the hand-hole access, but with some fine tuning I got the cover I picked up with the handle to fit, end result looks surprisingly clean.

Also started cleaning up the panel itself. There was a little overhand on the sides and top, so I took a flap wheel and sanded them flush to the frame. I flipped the unit over and cut the remaining excess off the bottom of the piece. There was also the relief cuts for the D-ring shackles,I did some side cuts and then using a hammer slowly worked them over to cover the openings, and also rolled the ends of the panel over the hinges.

Last task right now is to cut and weld in some small pieces that go over the sides of the hinge and relief cuts to clean up those open ends, and I still have about 4 or 5 bolt holes that ran into weld material and won't drill out properly I need to figure out how to fix.

[Desoto61]

Quiet here so thought I'd post an update. There were a few minor things to finish on the bed, including welding a stud for a ground wire, a few areas to clean up/grind down, and I wanted some way of securing anything I decide to put into the stake pockets, so I purchased some pins with the integral clips to see how they'd work since the access to the back side of the pin is a little tricky based on how they're mounted. The worked well and aren't too difficult to remove so the holes were drilled for those. Otherwise everything came apart and the bed was placed back on the trailer (after it got a little TLC too) and I hauled it off to the media blaster to get cleaned up and primed. I wired in a trailer connector real quick and used the Power Wagon to haul it's own bed!

We were out of town for a few weeks which made it a perfect time to haul the bed off anyway. Now that we're back and while the garage is still empty it's time to tackle a bunch of other tasks on the truck itself, mostly on the interior. I finally picked up a radio which means mounting the rear speakers, but they needed a place to go, so spent part of my weekend building speaker mounts behind the seats. The first one was a little ugly as I started with one piece and then changed my mind and it became two. The other side was much quicker as I just copied the design as one piece this time. Since the mounts will be hidden behind the interior I'm not too concerned about looks, the paint is more for protection than looks.

I've got to run some wires for a pair of amplifiers and a subwoofer, nothing crazy but with how loud the Cummins is the stereo will need some help to be heard. Also have some other interior tasks to tackle as well.