Since the rear springs are in, and final wheels and tires were on, time to fit the bed…….again.
I had it perfectly set where I wanted it with the original wheels and tires, and only needed minimal work on the wheel wells inside the bed to make it work. These tires are much taller, and believe it or not, slightly wider. It was a chore to put the bed on with these as they rubbed the fender lip. Getting the bed off was far worse as the fender lip caught the aggressive lugs on the side wall, preventing "lift off".
I knew I was going to at least have to widen the bed a bit, so tonight I cut it apart and added 1" to each side and set the bed back on. With the truck aired out, I found that I will also need to raise the fenders 2" as well. This is because the outside corner of the tires hit the inside of the fenders which prevents fully dropping.
Ugh.
I don't want to widen the bed anymore, as I don't want the square front bulkhead of the bed to pass the rounded rear cab corner.
I love the extra room in the bed it provides, but proportions are starting to get out of whack a little.
So, I will section the entire bed side 2" and raise the bed. The side of the bed has an awesome bead roll that encompasses the outline of the fenders and bed rails, and I want to keep those intact.
On with the pictures.
Fender os off on this side. You can see how far up the fender will need to go to clear the tires. I don't want the tires contacting the fenders at all as I plan to haul some weight with the truck (motorcycles) and I don't want the weight resting on fenders.
Here you can see how much room the bed will have. While only 15" deep, and 5'10" long, it's 5' wide. Makes the frame appear insufficient.
Here's the fenders fully aired out. While I would prefer this look at ride height, it's not possible. And I doubt I'd be able to get the tires off without removing the fenders or the bed. Out of the question.
Just another view. Fender is held with 2 clamps at the top, so the bottom at the front is kicked out. This will pull in.
This is the bead roll line I want to keep. Tire is about 1 1/2" up. Trying to keep 1/2" clearance for unlevel ground when parking.
View from the front.
I actually like the wide rear end. Makes it almost appear as though it's a dually (I have a soft spot for those).
This is the area the 4" exhaust will exit from under the cab. More than enough room to place where needed.
I'm thinking of dumping the exhaust out the rear fender where the circle is.
Since I have aluminum wheels, I think it's safe to use aluminum elsewhere on the truck, so I think I'll make a ring with aircraft rivets around it to clean up the hole, but this is the first idea. As we all can tell, ideas change progressively as I go along.
Since the truck is so small, I feel, for safety sake, I should add some adequate beep-beeps.
I want the bed to be 100% useable, so a requirement is to keep everything out of it. No gas tank, no exhaust stack, no frilly pointless typical rat rod crap, so these giant horns need hidden.
This is literally the only spot to put them. When I build the bed floor framing, I'll build a mount for them under there. They will barely squeeze past the trailing arms and drive shaft. This location will also keep them dry. I'm not worried about them pointing backwards, these have enough oomph to alert anyone around, no matter their location.
