How to gain 3 inches in an afternoon

[Ackattack]

Get your minds out of the gutters, I'm talking about tubbing the rear.

So basically I'm going to be running 315/35/20s on the back of my pickup. Guess what, they won't fit with the stock wheel wells. So I set out to tub the wheel wells. The idea here is to add some extra width while maintaining the stock look. Hopefully you won't be able to tell unless you know exactly what you are looking for. Here is my progress.

I first started by removing the wheel well. Of course the square holes didn't hold the bolts to prevent them from spinning, I cut a slot in them to hold them with a screwdriver, and that didn't work, so I cut the heads off of most of them. The two in the corner next to the fenders, I tack welded them and just took off the nut.

Then I drew out the plan on the floor with a sharpie and then taped up some lines to cut along.



The cross hatched area is the area to be removed.

I had to do a little drilling and prying to get the floor off of the cross members that they're spot welded too. So here's what it looks like after being cut out:



I cleaned up the cross members a little and sprayed a little spray paint in there while I had access to it.

Then I cut out some sections of my parts truck bed. To fill in the missing space.



After some cutting and grinding and a little bit of trial fitting, I got to tack welding all of the pieces in.



Overall, this will gain me about 3 1/4 inches of extra tire space. I may also try modifying the the piece in the wheel well that connects the inner fender with the outer fender so I can really set the tires at the edge of the wheel well.

For the wheel well themselves, I'm going to get new wheel wells and then splice in a section of the original wheel well (the originals are banged up a little.