Just wanted to share with you guys some of my projects I have been working on with Big Wood.
When I first bought the 71' Ford a few months back it came with a poor condition wooden bed that looked like it came out of a barn yard. Not to bash farm trucks or anything because I love the look of them, but when you live in a city, it sticks out entirely too much. So I decided to keep a wooden bed but build my own. It was my first time doing it but I think it went extremely well.
Here is the truck with the old bed:
My first road bump came in the form of how I was going to gain wheel clearance with the new bed. The back end had 3" Spacers under the bed which caused the entire back end to not have any bounce to it at all due to the suspension being maxed out all the time. I decided to get rid of the spacers and put on some load adjusting shocks. I got a pair of two brand new ones for $80.00 which was a steal for me!
Anyways, after I did that I figured that would be enough to deal with the space between the tires and the new bed but it wasn't.
I ended up having to fabricate wheel wells into the side of the bed which was not fun AT ALL. For anyone looking for a good trick to make sure the wells line up and look the same on both sides do this. First: tape some masking paper over the side of your wheel wells.
Then painstakingly trace your lines over and over until you decide on a good curve for the cut your going to make for the wells. After you get that curve tape a piece of tissue paper over your line and retrace that line using a thick black permanent marker. After you trace the line take of the tissue and masking paper and re-tape the tissue paper. trace back over that line and the ink from the marker will bleed through onto the wood. After you do that you can just move the tissue paper to the other side and do the same thing. Of course, if you have the money you can probably have better machinery to mark things for you but unfortunately I was working with $20.00 worth of wood and a jigsaw... Finally you'll end up with something like this:
Then I had to make a new taillight assembly for my new lights because I did not want them sticking out like the old ones. This was easier than I though it was going to bed when I realized the sold trailer lights from Wal-Mart that had hardware to be bolted in for a receded look. All I had to do was cut out two holes, slide the lights in, and bolt them down:
After all of that the truck bed ended up looking better than I could have ever imagined. I also decided to keep it a flat bed and will be adding "D" hooks to sides of the bed to just strap stuff down.
Any ideas as to color the the stain to paint it would be appreciated, I am torn between about 100 different tints! The truck will be flat black with orange and white pin striping.
hopefully it wasn't too many pictures!!!
Thanks,
Foxtrot
to the site! That new bed looks great, nice job 
