1965 Chevy Pickup & Hemi Hydro combo

And as is usual for me, I'm bouncing around a bit. I filled in the slots at the corners of the bed for the stiffeners that glue there, they looked horrible anyway! I also filled in the ejector pin marks on the inside of the tailgate, that was really fun!

The next step was making a way to get the rear fenders re-attached to the bed. I started by holding the fender in place and drawing a line inside....



Then I glued some angle strip styrene to the line, giving me a place to glue the fenders to!



A nice tight fit, this should work out just fine!





And finally, I came up with a devious way to attach the bed to the frame, and get the bolts that attach the bed to the frame on the 1:1 in there to, here's what I started with, I'll explain the rest later, wait for it!

Now, back to the bed floor, already in progress....

I buffed the Aluminum plate up....



And glued the wooden strips in place! A quick mock-up in the bed....



I left the center slats out of the bottom just so I knew which side goes up!

Remember a few posts back I said I found a way to attach the bed to the frame just like the 1:1? Well, here's the proof. I took the original bed floor from the kit, and drilled holes straight through the mounting bosses. Once they were drilled, I laid the original bed floor onto the new floor, and drilled through the new floor using the original floor as a template. The next step was cutting some straight pins to go through the bed and into the frame. Turns out my modifying the slat layout affected this part, but it's nothing major. Turns out the bolts at the back of the bed would have ended up in the retaining slats, so I'll just find a way to attach the back side of the bed another way, but the front two "bolts" fit perfectly, and it looks good to boot!



You can see where the rear bolts landed in this picture, look just behind the center bolts  on the top and bottom retaining straps and you'll see where the drill bit landed in the straps instead of the wood. I just shifted the "bolts" inward on the top side and clipped some straight pins really short for those two.



The last bit of work for the bed today was to add the cross braces back onto the bottom side. the old bed floor was once again used to show me where they needed to go, and some styrene c-channel was glued in the proper locations!

And the last update for tonight, I mocked-up the entire bed to see how it all looks together, and I'm very pleased with how it came out, especially considering how horribly bad this bed was to start with. I go off-call in the morning, so I hope I get a few early days this week, and maybe I'll be able to sling some paint on the bed and button this baby up!







Looking at the back of the bed cover, I need to add something to cover that gap between the bed cover and tailgate...looks like I've got a bit more work to do on that part!