This was another short week being that Bob, my helper, was out on Monday. However, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday saw some accomplishment.
On Tuesday, we picked up the sheet steel, 14 guage, for the front panel for the bed, stopped to have a look at the engine I'm considering buying, and stopped at the hardware store for yet another expenditure for nuts and bolts.
The remaining two days we:
Installed the front panel to the bed. We drilled some twenty-plus holes for the bolts and then put 'er together. Looks good! We did deviate from the original when having the bed walls made in that we did not incorporate the outside "step" that was located around the outside about 2" below each of the three sides chosing instead to wrap them outside with 1" by 2" square pipe even with the top. We felt that this would better protect any riders from the original 1/4" wide edge plus give them a must better hand-hold.
Added the salvaged pieces to the new tailgate and installed it. We had been able to save the outside strapping, one of the closure hooks (The other was missing and Bob is fabricating another one which will match the original.) and the step which is located inside the tailgate. Didn't have the capacity to rivet it all together as originally done so bolted all together.
We must have either been very careful or very lucky as we had very little variance occur when fitting all these parts together. Things were really squared up!
That's it for now!
Regards,
Jim