1996 F250 Restomod: Part Three

Rewind to 2018, and you have the hinges i first built for the dump conversion

Now, those hinges and have been  joined together, with a piece of 4x.5" plate:

I wanted to remove the rear tank, but that necessitated the removal of the trailer hitch, so off it came!

Tank removed.  This one wont be going back in (more on that later)

Looking at this side of the frame rail, we have some rust to deal with

With the hangar off, you can see how rough the frame is

So step one of the repair required making a backing plate that fit inside the frame rail.  Its bolted in at the corners, and i transferred the 4 holes for the helper spring pad, so i could cut the bad section out, without having to worry about getting the pad back in the correct place later: 

I cut the bad section out of the frame, and made a patch to fill the void.  I purposely didnt do a square, over concerns of creating a stress point in the corners.  I intentionally made the patch small so i could burn into the back plate when welding it in, as i have no intention of removing it.

Vertical section welded and ground, tacking in the top section now

All done welding, ground and painted

the back plate is now fully welded into the frame as well

Moving on from there, i grabbed one of the old frame rails i cut off the aluminum bed, to try to get an idea of how the bed is going to fit onto the frame

All this really showed me though, it that i could do all the mockups i want, but really i just need to bring the bed outside and get it sitting on the frame.  So, outside it went!

On its way down

...and onto the frame it goes!

For now its just sitting there, with the bed rails c-clamped to the hinge so it doesnt move.  The next step is going to be to get the rear crossmember built so the bed can actually be bolted to the hinge... 

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