existing bed to flat bed?

[millican]

I was rear-ended by a guy in a Mitsubishi box truck this weekend sitting (third car back) at a stop light in NE Oklahoma. I now have a non-working tailgate. Is it possible to cut the bed down into a flat-bed if the floor is in OK shape?

(because these images of the tailgate are large for his insurance company, I provided links that you can use if you want to see instead of embedding the images. Please don't embed the images "as a favor" in another post.)

http://darrahmillican.com/~tom/datsun/P1140290.JPG

http://darrahmillican.com/~tom/datsun/P1140291.JPG

 

[ggzilla]

1. Unbolted the existing pickup bed and remove

2. Fabricate a flatbed out of wood

[wayno]

It's to much work cutting the sides off, and it looks ugly with fender wells sticking up.

You can cut everything off, and then raise the bed to the point that you can fill the fender well holes with flat pieces of metal, but it still looks ugly.

That is what was done to this 320 I bought, but it just looks ugly.

 

This is what I did to my 521, but it's a dually also, but it was a normal axle for a year, but have not one photo of it from that year. :(

[millican]

I actually like the 320 and that you kept those little hooks and handles on all of them. (Why don't trucks still have those!)

[ggzilla]

Yes, the 320 bed looks nice. I never saw that done before.

[millican]

I'm looking at that 320 and thinking about storage boxes under the bed for things like jumper cables, ratchet straps, oil and funnel, all the stuff that just doesn't fit in the bathtub-sized cab. If the other guy's insurance company could be happy with buying me a basic torch to settle it... It would definitely be cheaper than what they'd be facing if he'd have run into the car in front of me - a Prius.

 

That does get back to why I'm thinking about this. His insurance company wants to total the truck since the quotes I have so far are so freaking high. I know they inflate their quotes because they hear "insurance" and get "$$$" in their eyes. Well, too much means nothing in this case. I would just let it go, but the other driver had been tailgating for 15 miles or so before this making my wife very nervous. Because these were icy curvy roads, there was nothing I could do but keep going and hope for the best. Even after the accident, he decided to move his truck for some reason. We had moved to a large gas station parking lot with plenty of room. When he started to drive by and couldn't without scraping my passenger side mirror, I knew something just wasn't right. My wife was dumbfounded and just looking at me as if I had an excuse for this guy. I hate to think that he can drive like that and get away with me paying for his mistakes, but it's looking like that's what will happen. I should just avoid Oklahoma. Anyway. I'm through ranting about possibly drunken shitheads, and that 320 arrangement is growing on me.

[svo521]

I like the bed on the 320!  It may be the solution to my problem as well!  :devil: seems cheap enough........

[wayno]

Maybe it's that rear bumper, maybe it's the fact that you can see everything underneath, but I think it's ugly myself.

The reason the 320 ended up this way was because someone side swiped the trucks box, so that was how he fixed it.

[tr8er]

That bed could be fixed from what I see in those two pics. Seems much easier than making an entire flat bed. I'd skip insurance and have him pay for your time.

[millican]

There are advantages to having the sides of the bed still there. I recently found that the back corners are broken and would need to be welded back in place. I also called a salvage yard in CA that said they had a "nice, blue" tailgate that would fit the 82 Datsun pickup. It's not blue, and it doesn't fit. It really pisses me off that they've offered to refund the cost of the tailgate, but not shipping, which I would pay twice for their mistake. It's looking more and more like I would just need to go pick up a new bed if I want the sidewalls. I did buy an angle grinder and 130mm roller mill recently and am pretty stoked about that. New tools are always a nice pick-me-up.