K30 flatbed install and swap

[gloriavoxdei]

Hey all, I'm looking at possibly swaping my dually bed for a flatbed or stakebed. Have any of you done this and can tell me how involved it is? I'm thinking of drining over and doing the swap in an afternoon. Any help would be apreciated.

[Tx Firefighter]

I've built a number of flatbeds over the years. You need to figure out how the bed designer intended it to be secured to the frame. Some places use giant ubolts, some use oak boards between the frame and bed to level out the frame top, etc.

Personally, I use pieces of 3 inch channel welded to the outside of the bed support beams and the frame below it. I sit the bed atop the frame, level and square it to the truck and clamp 8 pieces of channel vertically on the outside of the frame rails up to the bed supports and fully weld it front and back to both the frame and bed.

The hard part of the whole deal can be the fuel fillers though. For God's sake make sure you allow plenty of slope from the filler neck to the tank. So many flatbeds get installed and the gas filler tube is near horizontal. You wind up not being able to fill the tank without either parking the truck on a heavy slope or running the wheels upon a block of wood to raise one side of the truck.

My current welding rig came with a flatbed already installed on it with a poor fuel hose routing. Since 1994 when the bed was installed, the previous owner carried a 4x4 block of wood to put on the ground at the gas station so he could pull the left side of the truck up on it to allow fueling. I wound up cutting a channel in the bed to allow me to raise the filler up high enough. I'm not carrying a block of wood with me everywhere.

[pig rig]

weldrig and not carring a block of wood
theres going to come a day when your going to need that chunk of dunage