Wood bed plan.

[Purple]

There seems to be a lot of talk on making a wood bed, or rather showing off a finished one.

There isn't a whole lot about the actual building part.

This won't be a few months from now, but of course I've started on plans.

The first of which is a mount for the bed frame to bolt onto.

My idea eliminates having to weld onto the frame at all.

 

[Purple]

Bed frame, phase 1.

 

[Purple]

Phase 2.

 

[cvar]

Yup, good luck with this fun project. I look fwd to seeing what you invent.

My concern with a wooden bed was fear of fire. The exhaust pipes get pretty hot, so a long heat shield would be a good idea, esp. one with a big air gap between the shield and the wooden bed. Raising the bed 6" above the frame would help separate it from the exhaust pipe.

I think all that weight should directly sit on top of your frame itself, via horizontal cross-members (I-beams) to help distribute the load. I would not feel comfortable having only small vertical risers bolted to the sides, cuz they might tend to buckle & collapse, unless they had hefty L-brackets or something to sit atop the frame rails. Why not attach to the original 6 bolts on the frame too?

It's gonna look pretty!

 

[The_Epsicle]

One of my neighbors has a wood bed on his GMC, it looks great I can't wait to see how yours turns out.

 

[ElectraRider]

The last time I did one for work, I took three x sixes and scribed to the frame, for flat surfaces to start
from.

 

[Will]

Yeah, don't do that. The bed needs to rest on the top of the frame. I sold a 3-axle gooseneck trailer to a guy with an older Dodge Cummins and I drove it down there to him. Her was going to meet me outside of his town down in Tennessee to take over the trailer and parade it into town to show it off. I looked under his truck and saw that his home-made flatbed was just like you show--a total of 6 bolts (his was held on by 3/8" stuff) and his gooseneck plate was right on the surface of the bed.

Normally a flatbed is mounted onto a chassis cab which has a different frame than a pickup. A chassis cab has straight frame rails and also reinforcement so that you can drive the truck without a bed on it. A pickup needs the bed for stiffness or it twists horribly. The bed needs its own frame rails to go along the top of the existing frame rails and it needs spacers between so the bed frame can be straight. It needs cross members of steel on top of the bed frame and then the wood goes down the length of the bed over the cross members. It's not really a wood bed--the wood is just the flooring. It needs a steel perimeter tying all of the ends of the cross members together so the truck frame doesn't twist.

There are a couple of ways to connect the bed frame to the truck frame. U-bolts are common, and that's what I would do. Bolting straps like you show through the web of the truck and bed frames would work. You aren't supposed to drill through the top or bottom of the frame (the flanges) but you can do whatever you want through the web (the vertical part of the C-frame). I like the u-bolts.

Also, I've seen both rubber and hardwood used as an insulator between the truck frame and the bed frame, but that's in big trucks. I might not bother in a Ranger.

 

[Purple]

Not really worried about "frame twist", it's not a 4x4 and I'm not gonna be climbing sand dunes with it either.

As far as "buckling". I don't plan on having much weight in it.

 

[Mike Tonon]

Ha! I dream about building an 83' 2.2 diesel, manual transmission, bone stock base model and maybe even simplified beyond that, black paint on the bottom, white on the top half (to keep it cooler in the hotter weather) with a short bed, bottom of the bed made out of wood.

Build your wood bed! Can't wait to see it! How about using Trex with wood grain, so it doesn't rot?

 

[Will]

I'm not talking about offroad twisting. It's as limp as a cooked noodle without the bed. Every imperfection in the road is going to work the frame rails. It's going to loosen rivets and eventually cause a crack to start somewhere.

I couldn't care less what you do. I explained the difference between a pickup frame and a chassis cab to you. Once you take off the bed and don't replace it with a structural body, the clock is set on your truck going to the recycler.

 

[cvar]

^^^ +1

Yup, Will is right.
Furthermore, it's gonna happen even faster due to your plan of making the new bed MUCH wider than your frame rails will lead to even more twisting, just due to leverage from the load. It's physics.

 

[Mark_88]

This is also why some people spend a great deal of time and/or money to have their frames reinforced when they put in a more powerful engine...not to mention adding some weight to the back end just to keep it from forever doing burnouts or bunny hops...

I was contemplating this years ago but a very wise welder advised me he needed to build the frame of the box right or there would be problems...you can do it cheap from the start but you'll end up paying for that later...