[shores6]

Alright, back to the bed floor. When it came time to cut the bed floor out for the hinged section, Im not gonna lie I was scared **** less lol But it went according to plan.



For the hinged section, I just built another frame out of 1" square tubing that fit inside the 1.5" tubing. The hinges are around 7" long, 5/8" diameter barrel weld on hinges.





When it came to mounting the hinged section, I got some tabs and welded them to the 1" square tubing and put nut serts in the crossmembers in the bed. The struts were definitely trial and error. I ended up with struts that are almost 21" long extended with 70 lbs of force each. Mounted some trick tabs in a couple different spots until I was happy with where the hatch shut. When the hatch was open, I wanted it to be the same angle as the hood when its open. So I put one of my Porterbuilt hinges together and put an angle finder on it and it was around 45*. Also got some chub tubz from Rob. These things are awesome. I ended up with the CT44s for a 12" wide wheel in case I decide to make a wheel change in the future. The chub tubz are just mounted with 4 bolts in each corner with nutserts in the bed floor.





I looked at about a million latches for this thing. I want something that was going to latch but also be able to be used as a pull. Easy enough, right? Wrong. While finding a latch that meet that criteria is pretty simple, finding one that also met the dimensions I needed was a bit of a chore. The problem was the ribs in the bed floor only being an inch and half wide. Most latch pulls were 2.5" in diameter. Would look a little dumb in my opinion. I ended up with a compression lever latch from southco. While it wasn't my first choice, it was definitely my best choice. Then it was off to get some more powder coat