|
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... 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. Got my assistant helping me:  ...and in the garage!   Going over:  The header is sitting on a set of wheel dollys while the back end is on a pair of 55 gallon drums. Whatever works, right?  Tin box for the ramps, its just riveted to the underside of the bed  So the plan is to remove the ramp box as it will interfere with the hydraulic scissor. From there i need to start on the frame rails- the bed is for a C&C and they measure ~34.25" wide, whereas my truck is a standard frame, which measures more like 37.375" wide. So the plan is to remove the original frame rails from the bed and put new ones one at the correct width. Ive got new channel in the garage ready to go to make new ones, so the weekends plan is to try and get both rails off the bed so i can start mocking up the new ones. Remember this?  Mounting hardware removed:  filler neck disconnected:  dissecting the wiring:  these things have a galvanized tray underneath for ramps that will need to go:  ...and coming up!   The donor truck went back to its parking spot in the stones for now. Eventually my red bed will get cobbled onto it and then a buddy is buying the truck from me.  Today im going to clean the bed and get it ready to go into the garage for some modifications. I need to make it fit my 96 F250, which is not a C&C truck, so its going to take some work to fit on my frame. So the dump bed works pretty awesome! You cant really tell, but theres a yard of stone in the bed.  I didnt shoot any vid of it dumping, didnt think of it at time, was more concered with watching it, since a yard of stone is ~2600lbs. ive used it a couple times now, it is super awesome. The green tailgate presented a problem though. It was a necessity as my original tailgate got smashed, but its bowed pretty badly, and i was losing stone on the way home. So, i dug out a shell ive had kicking around, and decided to see what i could do with it. This one was also green, so i sanded it and then rattled it with some red primer, then sanded again  Starting to lay color. Again, all rattle can as i dont own a spray gun, and wasnt going to buy one, just to spray a tailgate  Couple coats of clear later, starting to look better  Some more wet sanding and some wax, and this i what i ended up with:  Not too bad for rattle can, if i do say so myself!! Hardware from my gate going in:  ...and the finished product!   Considering its all rattle can, i think the end result ended up pretty good, even tho its slightly off-color. its still way better than green, and this gate is actually straight! So from here i moved on to two other projects. #1, front brakes!  Power Stop carbon-ceramic pads, and their rotors as well. Havent driven it yet, we'll see tomorrow if they work any better than the crap Autozone brakes that were on there before. #2, bumper mods. I really couldnt bring myself to drill 4 holes in my shiny new tailgate, so i had to find a different place to put the license plate. So here we go! Take this:  and fit it here:     Being inset, it clears the hitch with plenty of room!  then i drilled some holes  ...and reinstalled the OEM plate lamps, after i painted them to match the bumper:  Hopefully this is the last of the work to this thing for the year, as my other projects are piling up!
Made some progress on the water/meth injection. My wiring harness uses 7 wires, so rather than build an extension, i bought 7 wire trailer harness:  More OEM wedgelok pins being put to use   Original harness on the frame:  ...and the new extension plugged in and looking OEM  The harness runs up the bed here. Next to it is a hydraulic hose connected to some 3/8 stainless tube via some swagelok fittings for the water.  The route up the bed:  Another OEM connector, where my extension harness ends in the toolbox. In the top left you can see where the tubing enters the box. 100% stainless tube from the bed hinge to the toolbox.  The original toolbox harness modified with a mating wedgelok connector installed:  ...and the whole water/meth system is now reinstalled and done!  I turned the system on to check for errors and didnt find any, so i removed/cleaned the injector and then purged the system. Holy shit i think were done!!! I still need to find a place to relocate my CB antenna to, but aside from that she's 100% done! After sitting for 7 weeks under a black walnut tree the truck needs to go to the carwash pretty badly, so i guess thatll be my test drive to see how badly the bed rattles around. The kit comes with these guides to keep the front of the bed aligned with the cab, but i never installed them because my hinges are so much more sturdy than the ones that came with the kit, and the bed doesnt flop around like it woudve with their hinges. So we'll see after the test drive (hopefully tomorrow) if i need to put them on or not. Bought a piece of unequal angle (3x4) from the scrap steel yard to begin mockup for a bumper   bumper brackets  So heres the rough idea:  Seems awfully small, but with the bed tilted, you can see its a tight fit  No room for a license plate on the bumper  Trimming the corners  Adding a piece of 2" plate to the bottom  Now its starting to look like something:  All done and ground  For lack of a better place, i put rivnuts in the tailgate, to hang the plate off it. This gate is beat up anyway, so not too upset about drilling holes in it  All done & painted!  While i was waiting for it to dry, i fixed my trailer wiring. Turns out Clips & Fasteners sells replacement pins for Ford Wedgelock connectors. Male + female, and both the large and small pins. They get crimped on using the same tool as weatherpaks do, which i already have. Since i had broken wires i cut all of them back to fresh copper and repinned all of them   So all thats left is to bolt it on, and its done!    Its a tight fit against the hitch:  Look closely, youll see the bumper brackets all but touch the hitch, and there is actually a vertical groove in the bumper to clear the hitch. Its tight!  The bumper is a little smaller than id prefer, but as big as i can make it. Overall i think its looks pretty good on there though. So thats two more items off the list! So next week i need to tackle the water/meth injection, move my CB antenna and then i think im done! Ok, so weve got 4 main projects left to finish this thing. Gotta solve the bumper problem, fix trailer plug wiring, rewire/plumb the water/meth injection, and relocate the CB antenna. Well, ive got 2/4 done now. All this work on the bed; so i decided to work on the bumper. Since its got to pivot with the bed, i started building brackets to attach to the hinges:    One bracket done, shown attached to the bed-side half of one of the hinges. It attaches to the 5/8 hinge pin, plus 2 bolts up thru the hinge and into the bed. Should be sufficient.  Both brackets done, + hinges finally in paint!  Now to design a bumper.  |
