can a 68 long bed be cut down to fit on a short bed truck?

[hewittca]

As mentioned above, this has been done many many times and documented quite well on the board. I am also in the middle of a shortbed conversion, and have a few threads that I am referencing quite a lot. For my truck, I ultimately decided to go with used original GM bedsides versus shortening my longbed sides for a few reasons. As you pointed out, the body line does drop as it goes back, and although you can massage the line to get it to line up, I can still notice a slight change in slope of the body line on trucks that have been shortened this way. Also, the longbed sides have the center stake pocket and a rounded leading corner on the wheel opening (versus the square corner on the shortbed sides). Regardless, shortened longbed sides still look good and here are links to a few of my favorite conversion threads:

blakeaz33's truck. This is the most typical approach to the conversion. He does a good job of documenting the process.






Rkcrln's truck. This approach is similar to above except he had to get creative with the front cut line to eliminate the bedside fuel filler.



65standard's truck. If you want to preserve the original paint as much as possible, this is the approach to take. It does, however, require a bit more metal working skills.




I Have No Idea's truck. This approach uses a shifted cut line for the rear section to help spread out the difference in the body line and make the transition less noticeable.