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Next up i had to finish the hinge. So i started by welding in that second xmember i made a while back, along with a piece of 4"x.250" plate underneath the whole frame, to give myself a place to bolt the bed to the hinge. In this pic its just clamped in place:  With that sorted, i drilled holes for four bolts (the previous dump conversion only used two), and i then added two gussets to it, to stiffen the area up:
So this means, with the use of the gantry, i can now tilt the bed!  So now theres two more issues to deal with. #1 is the front bed support:  Currently i just have it sitting on a piece of 2x2 box. Im probably going to use a longer piece, and then make tabs to bolt it to the frame + make guides to align the front of the bed. it doesnt necessarily need it but will make it more stable when loaded, The second is dealing with the mount for the scissor. Looking closely you can see it almost lines up with the existing xmembers in the bed:  Im planning on building a new one to fit the bed better, but it gave me an idea. So i grabbed one of the old frame rails i cut off, and made two more xmembers out of it:  ...and welded in! They line up with two of the small i-beams that support the bed floor, so theyre welded into the frame rails, and those beams, which should stiffen up the middle section of the bed significantly:  My next move is going to be to build a new frame for the scissor that will bolt to those two xmembers, and then the bed will go up and down by itself again! 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... This update has been slow in the making. First up, the bed had to come off:  Located safely in the toolbox is my water/methanol injection pump & tank, which also had to come out:
Bumper, taillights & associated wiring removed:  ..and off the bed came!  I set it down on the back of the donor Superduty  ...and the successfully scabbed it onto the frame!  I had to put a couple notches in & make a couple simple spacers, at which point i simply drilled new holes in the bed floor and bolted it down to the trucks frame! Whipped up a simple license plate bracket, and then sold the truck for $1k, which is almost half of what i originally bought it for! Lost some time troubleshooting a drivability issue in the '90 Bronco. Started running rich but no codes. Took me a longer than im willing to admit, to figure out the ECU had failed. In addition to the usual capacitor failure, we also had a resistor blow  A buddy fixed the ECU for me, but im my troubleshooting i replaced the injectors, assuming i had a sticky one. After reinstalling the ECU the bronco ran just as bad if not worse; some more troubleshooting revealed that one of the reman injectors had failed and was stuck open, just dumping fuel down the intake. So back apart she came:  I ended up putting the original injectors back in (the ones i had rebuilt myself about a year ago) and now its back to running just fine again! The moral of the story is, troubleshoot better, and dont assume the ECU in a 33 year old vehicle is still good!  Frame rails and gussets are now fully welded:  Still new to AL welding so i did some practice beforehand to dial my settings in which i think paid off; im pretty happy with how my welding is going thus far:  I had 9' leftover from my 25' stick, so i made 2 crossmembers  First one is getting fit up at the front, to tie the frame rails to the headache rack
...and all done
I dont know the location of the second one yet. I want to put that one where the hinges will bolt to the bed, but i need to take measurements since this is a 9' bed. So i think the best way to do this will be to just pull the F250 into the driveway and yank the original bed off so i can mock this one up properly. So this week's plan will be to get the stock bed off, and get this one sitting on my frame so i can figure out where the hinges will bolt up. From there i can get it welded in place, and start working on building a beefy crossmember for the scissor to connect to. Finall, an update! So i removed the galvanized storage box for the ramps, and started removing the original frame rails from the truck bed  ...but then this happened during a storm:  So i lost a couple weeks while i cut those trees up, got rid of the stump and brought in dirt to fill in the hole and re-grade the yard. So with that done, i was able to resume my work on the bed. So... Both frame rails are removed now:
Looking at the construction, the I-beam cross members sit inside the outer frame instead of flush with the bottom of them:  ...which means the frame rails sat on 1/8" spacers so theyd contact the i-beams. Since the rails are getting replaced/moved outboard i had to remove these as well  So previously i had bought a 25' stick of 5" 6061, which i had cut down to two 9' rails (plus a remnant for cross members)  ...so that gets me to this morning, when i triple checked the frame rail width on the F250, set my new rails in place, and tacked them down!  I made all new gussets for every i-beam just like the bed originally had, made some spacers out of 1/8" plate, and started welding. I bought the spool gun for my machine, and after tinkering a bit started welding. I think ive got it dialed in ok? First time mig welding aluminum, i think the welds look good.  I have the rails fully welded so i started welding the first gusset before stopping for the day:  Tomorrow morning ill be back out there- hoping to finish welding this gusset (plus get the other 11 all done as well). Im not sure about the verticals yet, so im gonna have to set some scraps up and practice that a bit before i start welding on the bed. |
