Another moose season without cupholders has come and gone. Coffee was nearly spilt, and yet no progress has been made. The situation is completely unacceptable. People are getting pissed, but that is the way of prioritization.
On other fronts, there has been progress - well, really only in the building of the flatbed. The plywood over bed rails, while nearly free, was a crappy way to roll. The bed had huge holes in it from a redneck fab shock mount hoop that extended a foot into the bed. That ate up too much space and was stupid tall for the shock mounting it provided. After I removed the bed, I zipped off the old shock mount and rebuilt it a little lower without compromising travel.
Yes, that is a real welding blanket... something about fuel lines and welding and... well, call me a pussy if you want.
Then it was on with the build for the bed frame, with goals being strong (enough to haul what I want) and lightweight (enough to not make me wish for the factory box) and not cock-blocking myself for future additions.
Frame is nearly complete here. All .120 wall 2" square tube except for mounts and toolbox supports. It is pretty light, but an awkward sob to move on and off, which needed to happen several times, of course.
Decked it with 3/4" (or whatever approximation of 3/4 Lowes sells these days) ply. I flip-flopped like Hillary on including the toolbox... glad I did, even though I had to block it up to make it fit. Genuine floor paint on the decking, and it seemed to hold up pretty well.
I was going to do stake pockets and rub rail for tie-downs, and probably would have if I'd had time to get materials, but limiting myself to 4 days proved to be a bad move. Had to work a few of those days and making a trip to AK steel during their business hours was just not in the cards. Ended up at AIH for something else, and saw the
L-Track. It was more money than I wanted to spend, but there is nothing worse than not having tie-downs (ok, there are some things that are worse, but I'm not going to get into that). Anyway, grabbed a couple of those and pretty much called it done. Fuckers are handy... each clip is rated at 1300lbs or so - in case I want to hang the truck off them.
Little things like the fuel filler take a lot of time, and are really not fun. I'll probably build in some protection for that area if/when I add storage on the sides.
Another shot before the maiden voyage.
It just wouldn't be right if a guy didn't do a proper capacity test.
It seemed to work as intended...