The box on my truck is just about toast. I'm not entirely sure how the truck was abused such that the floor in the box would completely rot with a box liner, but it has happened. The bed sides are pretty good, no rust around the wheel wells; only rust spots are between the wheel wells and the bumper. The sides have detached at the top from the front and back and the rear bottom has been reinforced with some heavy steel.

Now, I finally managed to find a box that is in good shape and within my budget. The floor is solid, the passenger side is sold, however the driver's side wheel well is starting to rot and needs a patch panel. One of the ribs also needs replacing but I'm not too concerned about that.

I'm wondering how easy/difficult would it be to replace the whole bed sides from my current bed to this new one? I know that the flareside bed sides just bolt on, but I'm assuming that is because they are fibreglass and the bed itself is steel. Are the styleside bed sides welded on? Personally I would prefer to have a solid, one piece bed side rather than put in a patch panel as they're difficult to get right and in this climate the filler almost always starts to crack in a few years.

 

http://www.powerblocktv.com/player/s...-17&ep_show=XT

This may give you some idea, hope this helps.

 

Yeah, I saw that episode of XTreme. But, he started with a flareside bed which has fibreglass sides. Not sure if the styleside (full width) bed is bolted on or not.

 

I did both of mine.... Getting them off was kinda a pain drilling out what felt like 6 million spot welds! Lining the new sides up so the body lines matched up perfect was difficult for us cause it was my first time but after 2 days of work they turned out pretty perfect IMO.I have a flare side and style side looks like the flares bolt on? LOL

 

Flareside = narrower bed with fibreglass sides
Styleside = full width bed with steel sides

 

Yep i own one of each! I replaced the Styleside.

 

Use brand new panels...old ones are usually too rusted from behind to be worth it... Jeffs Bronco Graveyard sells the panels, for example.

 

I purchased mine from LMC and was not happy with them. was a lot of work getting the hung correctly to match up the body lines.

 

Bronco Graveyard only has patch panels, not the whole bed side. I don't have a lot of extra money to put brand new bed sides on the box so I'll either try and swap what I have or at the very least patch the wheel well.

 

Damn, I could use those old parts lol. Neat project for sure, I watched all that was there, bummed when they didn't show the finished project painted up and in action.

BTW, I just repaired/replaced all the bottom panels. Panels were rusting thru, but! above the body line, the metal was fine and gaged perfectly, so it was cheaper since I couldn't locate a good replacement bed in this state.

I went to school w/ Jeff (bronco grave yard). He's a good guy for sure. But, it didn't cross my mind to hit him up for F150 body parts...Darned! Anyway, LMC was very over priced and I've heard to many bad things about their metal. So I went with http://raybuck.com/c-54832-repair-pa...ight-duty.html and can vouch for them. The price was right and the metal was superb! Very easy to butt weld in. You have to do that right tho or they won't last long lol.

I recall pricing bed-sides and I think LMC was the only place I had priced them at. If I recall, they were expensive and yes, a lot of spot welds on the existing lol. A good spot weld cutting attachment is a quick clean way, but you may want to have two on hand if it's not cobalt coated. They're not worth a snot when dull.

 

I can get the wheel well patch panel from Rock Auto for around $80. Might price around locally. I may be able to just cut enough out of my current bed side; nothing better than OEM! Providing there's solid metal there, anyways...

I was hoping to get out of having to paint the new bed; its black while my truck is silver. There are worse colour combinations out there. I have seen a green/tan one with a red bed and a blue/tan one with a white bed; they look a little funny!

 

Well, Barbaque Black is on sale this time of year. You could ask Santa, try the mall...

 

If I didn't have to patch the bed, I would just do a fade on it and be done with it. But, since I have to patch the wheel well I may as well just paint the whole thing. I plan to do the inside with Dupli-color Bed Armor so I don't have to worry about painting that!

 

Are you referring to that bed piece directly above the rear tire. Yea, they didn't use much of a wheel well if you noticed. Which is probably why they tend to rust out first just behind the rear tires (lower bed panel). It took 11 or 12 years before mine rusted thru.

I have seen wells rust out in the past, but not with these models for some reason. Haven't heard of it actually, -not until now that is. Can you replace the entire well ? I mean do they sell just that piece? Or is there enough good metal around the bad spot to piece it. That 3m panel bond on is great stuff if you don't have a Tig or Mig. Mine were in good shape, I did have to hammer and dolly them out tho before painting the bed. I shot the inside of the bed just to experiment w/my set up.

Unless your referring to the wheel arch rusting out. That would be a bit more difficult to repair, since the bed side warps easily up there. I would definitely Tig to reduce the heat and lay down the weld. Makes for easy planishing or hammer welding.

 

When I go to get the bed this weekend I'll take some pictures to hopefully illustrate better what I need to do.