[stick72]

A lot of assembly has taken place…..but to be fair, I should have posted a bit more frequently, I had two weeks off around Christmas, so I probably got a dozen 10 hr. days’ worth of work done over that timeframe.

I know there all always a lot of questions around replacement panels, and pretty much everything from the tub back is replacement, so I thought I would give my observations around what I experienced.

Overall, I was reasonably pleased with all the aftermarket panels. Do they drop into place, require no fitting, and bolt up perfectly?…..not exactly. However, I don’t really know if NOS stuff would either. It’s a 40+ year old vehicle, tolerances were not as tight then as they are today, so I suspect the assembly line had its share of fitting as well.

My assessment

Bed Floor – I don’t want to say perfect, but I haven’t found an issue yet that I could attribute to the bed floor. Every hole lined up, every captive nut worked.
Bed Sides – Generally pretty good. The annoyance I had is that the bedside would not fit onto the bed floor. The “pocket” that the rear of the bedside has in one case was smaller than the rear bed rear support, and in the other case it was identical. With a little bending I got the “identical” one in, but on the other side I had to drill out the spot welds to spread the pocket to get it on. You would think the folks manufacturing the parts would double check that they fit together. I would say some of the issues I experienced were self-inflicted. I tightened and loosened a lot of things a lot of times. Sometimes it was intentional to confirm fit, sometimes it was a mistake, and I would later find something I forgot to install that would have make since to do first.
Biggest challenge – The area where the bed side, bed floor, rockers, torsion boxes and re-enforcement plates gave me the biggest headache. To be fair, there are about a dozen bolts that need to line up between all of these pieces, but in my case the re-enforcement plates seemed to be always slightly off. Doesn’t mean the plate was the issue, maybe it would have dropped right into place on a different vehicle, but it my case I spent a couple hours per side laying on my back with a Dremel tweaking holes to gets bolts in,

Advice/Things I learned the hard way…
I didn’t chase any threads, but I tried to pre-test every captive nut with a bolt with anti-seize. If you are working by yourself, holding the part with one hand and trying to start a bolt with other, makes life much easier. I usually knew when I ran across one I had missed…….

Bedsides are heavy, secure your work – Even if you think they are positioned and balanced and you can reach for a tool, don’t do it. After making that mistake I always secured the bedside in the ratchet wench I rigged up for removing the top, my penance will be some bodywork on what had been a perfect panel.

Still a long way to go