Featured Hot Rods Pickup bed/box floors. Show me what you did

The wood floors look good at shows, but the 56 F100 I am about to start on, is going to be a driver and every day truck.

I was thinking about using steel C purlins rather than wood. Spray them with Raptor bed liner and call it good. I just have to do the math and see if that would work.

On my 53 F100 I built 20 years ago, I used 3/4" marine grade plywood and sprayed both sides with Raptor. I cut holes for D rings and bought a Mr. Pickup rubber mat. It wasn't glamorous, but it was functional.

 

I’ll be interested to see what ideas show up on this one. Someone in the past cut everything out of the bottom of the bed of my ‘33 pickup, nothing left but unfinished torched edges. I’m not sure how to fix it.

 

Here’s what I did for my ‘35: the metal pan and wood underneath were totally shot. I put wood under a new pan I had bent up for me. Drilled holes in the new floor pan for where the old “bed pan” would have been bolted down. Bought some stainless bed strips and drilled them to match the bed pan holes. Sprayed pan with tinted bedliner. Installed strips.
There was more to it like making a hole to access fuel sender and making holes for the mounting bolts.
I plan on having the battery back there in an old metal trunk made to match the bed finish.
Hope this helps.

 

That’s similar to what I was thinking, but use the c purlins flipped upside down to look like the bed wood. The bed is 48-1/2” wide, so 8 would do it. Not sure on the gap in between for the strips though.

 

This is pretty “red neck ingenuity “ I don’t hate it . I think this is ridiculously useful if you’re hauling stuff.

what if you did a “ fancy bed” with wood and had a mat you could slide in and out ? Those heavy duty mats they use in horse stables , weight lifting gym mats , we fix ice resurfacers at work ( think Zamboni ) but another brand they park the trucks on these heavy duty rubber mats so the blades don’t get damaged .

just a thought , best of both worlds kinda thing .

 

Ive seen the plasticized deck planks used (Trex, etc) available in lots of colors. Tough but a little pricey.

 

The bed strips/ purlins are 7 3/4 inches apart on center and line up with the subframe holes. There a 5 of these on mine. The edge trim on the sides and front, I had bent up at a local metal shop

 

I used pine treated with carbon black and boiled linseed oil. I had the original bed strips powder coated.

 

I’ve got an 8ft break, at one time I thought about bending 16 gauge into that c-shape stated by the OP.
Welding or bolting them together hidden on the sides

 

My '32 pickup was built to be a driver and not a show boat, I wanted the bed to be used to haul metal or trash.

I just used a sheet of 3/4 plywood and covered it with black vinyl, it did the job as intended. HRP

 

When we built my pal Dave's 32-34 confused pickup we did it right by installing high gloss boards and stainless trim.

32/34



But it was rarely seen sense we made a cover for the bed. HRP

 

We did the bed in Dave's 1952 truck exactly like the confused truck. nicely finished wood and stainless strips. HRP

 

Mine will have a hard cover on it as well, so no one will ever see it.

 

How about this theme, but with a tread we could appreciate? Like Firestone Double Diamond sprint tires. It would take less tires to cover the bed.

 

Just wood, lots of stain and spar varnish...and some spring-loaded SS tie downs I recessed into the planks.

 

I just used a steel pickup bed floor and painted it to match the bed sides. Clean, tough, and functional. If its covered, why reinvent the wheel?

 

I've never seen this..... but I can see it in my head.
I'm seeing diamond plate with straight bands of the pips cut down flush for the stainless strips.

 

My daily driver deuce pickup has the original steel over wood floor it was born with. Has survived almost 95 years.

 

I used treated pine decking stained gray to complement the blue paint. Stainless strips using ****on head allen bolts. I cover it with a rubber mat when I haul stuff, which is pretty regular

 

I used 3/16” diamond plate in one bed, last truck was 3/16” steel plate with tie down anchors in floor.
My trucks always get used as a truck.

 

I used oak. Hit it with a torch then stained it. It holds up pretty well.

 

Good timing. My son is fixing to need to do the bed in his 61 GMC. I told him the easy way to do it based on back when I was young and broke like him. I had a pickup years ago that someone had just put a piece of 3/4" plywood over the rotted wood and strips underneath. Since I thought that was a little too redneck, I pulled all the rotten original wood out, put the plywood under the strips, drilled all the holes for new hardware, etc. and had what looked like a somewhat weathered original old bed out of a free piece of plywood. That also took almost no time compared to rebuilding the bed back like the factory did it.

 

Have done a couple, both using tropical decking wood and using stainless '53 Chevy bed strips.
This is my '53 Chevy pickup I converted to a king cab by extending the body 2', lengthening the frame 1' and shortening the bed 1'. This is Ipe, aka Ironwood. Common decking material, it looks very much like black walnut. Strange wood. Very hard and dense, has same fire rating as concrete and sinks in water! Must use carbide tools to machine it and the saw dust it produces is lemon yellow from the high resin content. I finished it with penetrating deck sealer. This is a good looking but super tough, daily worker option. This wood will still be fine when ****roaches finally go extinct. In fact, when they clear cut Ipe forests, they can't burn or bury it. I doesn't burn or rot. They have to sell it to decking companies.
Pretty wood.


With the sealer on.


Here are the machining dimensions to accommodate early Chevy bed strips. Wen installed, this leaves space for the bolts.




For my '59 El Camino I used another common tropical decking material, Tigerwood. However this is so pretty I decided to spray it with clear catalyzed urethane. Higher maintenance but worth it for the beauty. Same machining as on the '53.

The Elky had a second floor on top of this one. GM rushed this truck into production to compete with Ford's Ranchero so they took the station wagon platform, cut off the back top, and made a bunch of conversion sheet metal parts to complete the conversion. They left the 'wagon floorboard under the new bed floor! This is a photo of the infamous 'smuggler's compartment' in the 'wagon floor which is actually the rear seat foot well. Sealed under the truck bed, this is what happened to them over time. This rust also eats into the back of the cab behind the seat.


I sprayed the smuggler compartment with rust converter then welded a sheet metal cover over that. Also treated bed with rust converter.


Then I glued some strips of 3/4" plastic faux wood decking boards to level out the floor for the Tigerwood boards. Also helps space the two surfaces apart reducing rusting danger.


I think you would agree, this bed MUST be finished with clearcoat! Beautiful wood.

 

Wood floors don't have to have a high gloss varnish finish, they made zillions of them with wood floors that were used for work. I don't know how they were finished exactly, if it was a black paint or some sort of dark stain, but you could go that way with your truck.
Another thought is to use one of the tropical hardwoods like ipe - that species is very hard, and almost rot proof without any finish or sealer at all.

 

My son would council me to have some dignity. If you are going to do something, it won’t take much more money or time to do something decent. All sorts of wood and metal options. Is the work truck going to get a spot in the garage or sit outside? Wood can swell when it gets wet, you need to allow for that. Prefinished tongue and groove hardwood flooring hasn’t been mentioned yet. Whatever you do can be covered with loose plywood or horse barn matting when you are hauling stuff. PS- oak stains black when it gets wet and is in contact with metal.

 

It will live inside, but I am replacing my daily driver, so it will haul stuff occasionally. I don’t need fancy. I could do pine, but it is super soft.
Those fancy outdoor deck woods y’all are talking about seem like they would be expensive.

 

when I was into c10s people were using the steel bed floors from 69-72 c10s if I remember correctly you just had to make spacers to account for the difference in the metal to wood thickness.

 

When I bought that 66 C10 from your co-worker a few years back @Roothawg, it came with a new pine wood kit and polished stainless strips, hardware, etc. from Mar-K in our backyards... He was apparently going to paint it since he had put primer on all the wood. Anyway, I stripped all the primer off and just used boiled linseed oil. It seemed to work ok, but needed recoated every now and then since it sat outside in the sun all the time.

 

Yep, that is also an easy way to get a floor in one of those.