This will probably be somewhat long winded which should be expected I guess. I've been a little OCD about this project so I don't want to miss anything.
My truck is a 99 Ford Super Duty, 2wd with a 7.3 diesel and a six speed. It's a four door and has an eight foot bed.
I got the truck in 2011 with about 187k on the clock. Since then it's been on many, many trips with at least a heavy camper in the back if not a trailer as well. I've taken this truck to Trikefest three times. It has almost 226k on it now and it was due for a freshening. The drive train has always been solid as a rock and the body was extremely good for this area of the country. It definitely came from another part of the country. The beds on the Super Duty's are known to break some of the welded joints as well as rot out really fast up here. My bed wasn't rotted at all, but the seams had been broken and then welded by a rookie (who thought he was doing me a favor) so they broke again a year later. Not only that, but the scale on the frame was building up and I really wanted to address it. Then some dame drove into my driver's side dually fender and broke it and the insurance company found me half at fault (which was total bullshit) which only left me with $400 to replace the fender. That wasn't going to cut it. My buddy had been badgering me about some flat be he knew about with tool boxes for $200, so I figured that was the way to go. I had been getting bored with the truck anyways and it would only take me four days at the most, right?
The first thing we did was pull the bed off. I sold the bed for $600 so that gave me an even $1k to play with. I couldn't have done this without the help of a fellow vet and neighbor of mine who was more than gracious enough to let me use his heated garage, welder, and we were even able to borrow a plasma cutter. Prior to bringing the truck in the garage, we had a freak warm streak where it was about 55 degrees for about 3 days in January. I used my descaler (pneumatic needle scaler) out in my driveway and hit it hard with the descaler and afor the big stuff. I wish I had taken pictures of the amount of scale on this frame. Nothing was rotted though, just covered in scale. I drove around for about a week with no bed and a set of magnetic tow truck lights plugged into my trailer outlet. There were two days when I couldn't drive it as the paint dried. Originally I was just going to paint the back half of the frame, but while the bed was off we did a set of ball joints on the driver's side and a parking brake cable. During that time I couldn't ignore the scale on the rest of the frame, so back under I went to clean and paint the entire frame of the truck as well as some key body areas under the cab. The frame had been bead blasted and painted already, but there was no deck on it and no provisions for lighting. I bought a step bit for my drill to aid in the vast quantity of different sized holes we would have to drill but I found out really fast that drilling this body is a big deal. It came off of a 34 Ford and the metal is really thick. Not only that, but I'm inclined to think it might be "real steel" from back in the day and therefor harder to drill. Just a theory. The body ruined my $40 step bit as soon as I touched it and it laughed at the die grinder. We were forced to plasma cut all of the light holes out which was the plan for the bigger lights, but the button LED markers only require a 3/4" hole and the drill would have been ideal for that. We had to weld 3/4 washers on the inside of the body to have a nice, clean mounting hole after cutting the body with the plasma cutter. I built the entire wiring harness by myself and shrink wrapped everything.
Once the paint on the truck was dry and the body was ready, we moved it on to the truck. I wasn't sure how I was going to mount it when we first installed it. I looked at my trailer receiver and there was at least a foot and a half between the bottom of the body and the top of the receiver. Where my truck is 2wd it's lower anyways so my trailer hitch was always too low. This was a good opportunity to bring it up. Even still, a filler panel was going to be required. I ended up using pressure treated 4x4's trimmed accordingly between the frame and the body and U bolts to clamp the two together. The mounts for the mud flaps weren't going to work so I had to fabricate new ones. I cut the trailer receiver down 3" and welded it back together. I also added some gussets to it. I cut that hitch apart last year before Trikefest and welded it back together and it has been fine, so I am confident in my work. We have a 44" extension that goes into that receiver to reach out under the camper so the leverage makes a heavy load even heavier on that hitch. We roll fast and heavy so it has to hold.
Mounting the deck and tool boxes wasn't hard, it all fell into place. I added an external 2 gallon tank to the on board air system and put a visor over the windshield (which went slightly awry, fingers crossed it doesn't leak) and I also added a removable exhaust stack for when the camper is on the truck. I cut and fabricated the existing exhaust and then added some pieces I bought. The truck, trailer, and camper are now entirely LED externally, except for the HID headlights and front indicators on the truck. All LED's are clear or smoke lens with the appropriate color in the LED itself. Top license plate bolts on both plates are LED license plate lights. Windshield is brand new as well.
All in all it did cost me a couple of bucks in the end, but I don't know how much. I'd say no more than $200 or so. I am very happy with it and have some more to do, but this is the gist of it. I was waiting for a nice day when I could wash it, but that doesn't appear to be happening any time soon. I'll take some better pictures of the underneath and stuff when the weather breaks. Regardless of my situation, my truck is key. It is an absolute necessity for both work and play. If I lost my house, I'd still have my truck. The pictures are chronological. It's no secret that I've had a rough time over the last year or so. This is the first time I've been able to truly get off my arse and so something productive rather than just going through the motions. Something happened right around the time I started this project so I've had a lot to keep my mind occupied and feeling something other than miserable. For about two weeks I was working on this like a full time job, from the time I got up until the time I went to bed. Sometimes past 11pm. There was an additional week of some small fine tuning so it took roughly three weeks. Thanks for looking.
This is my buddy who helped me and let me use his garage.
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Originally Posted by DohcBikes
