Going to do a basic patch for the front floor of my F100 bed and was curious to see what others have done. I was planning on going about 3" up the front wall, making a 90 degree turn and then going about 6" on the floor towards the back. I'd also reinforce it from the bottom about 12" back (I haul a lot of motorcycles and that's about where the downward forces from the front wheels land). The only issue I'm foreseeing is the stiffening grooves in the bed floor. I was going to use flat sheet stock (a little thicker than what came on it) and try to blend the grooved section to the flat with welding material. Don't need it to look perfect since I'm going to put bedliner on it, but do you think this will work? Anyone got photos of something similar? I think those grooves around 3/16" top to bottom meaning if I split the difference I'd have to fill about 3/32", not including the thickness of the new material, which now that I think about it, will probably be about 1/8" anyway...
Eh, I could. I grew up on Jeeps though so I'm a little sick of looking at diamond plate covering rot.
Not the best pic, but you might be able to see that the front is a little rotted. I considered getting a donor bed, but I think any bed that is solid on the front of the floor is going to be solid everywhere, and then we're talking about a whole bed swap. Not a huge deal, but I live in an HOA (which sucks balls) and every time I make a sound in the garage or a spark flies I hear about it. Not to mention the lack of space for storing another bed for a few days. I think I can get away with throwing a patch panel in (hopefully). The moral of the story is don't move into an HOA
Your bed looks pretty damn good. If there is some rot patch it to blend in and put down some bed liner,, 'Remember,,it's a truck. My bed was beat to hell,,I cut it out and dropped in a 4' x 7' piece of 14 ga. steel.
Yeah that black one is real similar, but a lot prettier...yours? And yeah, I'm all about retaining its "truckness". It'll probably only ever haul motorcycles though, and the front wheels of a bike land on the spots where it's soft, so I gotta beef that up.
My last daily driver there was a piece of drywall laying in the bed for years,,it rotted a big spot out so I cut the bed out and laid in diamond plate,,,because it was free.
To be honest that bed looks solid as a rock, I don't even see any rot in the picture. I would say if you get hell everytime you make noise I would just leave it. I'm not trying to be a smart ass but the rust must be so small it would only matter if you were hauling sand. Maybe I'm just used to rusted up junk but I have rust much worse than that under the seat on my truck and I'm in no hurry to fix it. Just role with it because you know how it goes when you take apart a running vehicle, you find more stuff that should be fixed, and that cycle doesn't end. Just have fun with it, it looks like a cool truck
I hear what you're saying. If I had a better picture you could see that the leading edge is pretty rotted, which makes that whole front section pretty soft. When I've got two 500 pound bikes in there, with straps cranking their front wheels down towards the bed, it's a little sketchy. For now I'm just going to patch and line the bed. The floor of the cab is way worse, but doesn't bother me half as bad.
Have you checked LMC or somewhere similar to see if they have replacement panels for that front edge? Seems like a simple patch job, and a new panel would have the strength.
Yeah they don't seem to have bed floors for my model. It's all good though, I'd just assume do it my way and add some strength in the process.
I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of all of the rotted material cut out, but you get the idea from these two shots. I ended up using two 2" wide strips of 1/8" thick steel with a 1.25" 1/8" angle because it was all cheap at Home Depot. I also added the 4ft wide section to help spread the load and add a beefy tie-down point. You can see I've also got a Universal bed rack - this is hands-down the best improvement you can make if you frequently haul motorcycles. It's all rattle-canned in primer now, and will get bed-lined soon, once I get a few sunny days. Depending on if I can get an extra set of hands between now and then, I might try to have someone pry the bent parts of my bed into place so I can weld them. You can see the front doesn't have much welding because it's so bowed.
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