Now, before we get too carried away with the simplicity of this portion of the project, it should be mentioned that unlike the GM trucks of the era, the Ford pickup beds were assembled by spot welding multiple sheetmetal components, as opposed to GM’s simpler, screwed-together assembly. Due to this fact, we opted to replace our entire bed assembly with new sheetmetal, all thankfully available from Golden Star. While this may seem like a large pill to swallow at its onset, after considering the probable shape of the few panels that can be reused in addition to the labor involved in drilling out the spot welds and removing said panels, one is likely money ahead by springing for the entire bed package. In fact, considering the front bed panel and tailgate being the two panels that are the best candidates for reuse, these are also likely to be the most damaged two panels of the bed, making another argument for complete replacement. Of course, every build is different and swapping out your stock tailgate onto that new bed is completely possible, provided it’s in decent shape. But other than those two and the pair of wheelhouse panels, there aren’t any other panels that interchange when going from a longbed to short.

The fact that the Ford truck beds were welded together makes assembly of the new sheetmetal a slightly more difficult task than the assembly of a GM bed. Where the GM components may have had a few holes on each panel to aid in lining up said panels during rough assembly, the Ford tin needs to be carefully assembled, first using a series of clamps, followed by a few carefully placed sheetmetal screws or Clecos to hold things together as the assembly progresses. This process also requires the complete assembly of the bed panels before any welding can be performed, due to the necessity to check for final fit of said panels, bed square, and proper assembly process and panel overlap. We’ll be mimicking the factory spot weld process by punching holes in the overlying panels and then welding the two panels together. Similar in nature to the factory spot welds, this process is known as rosette or plug welding. To do this, we’ll need to know the precise location of where each panel overlaps so as to not only punch the hole in the proper location, but where to remove the e-coating (the rust-preventing factory coating Golden Star applies to every panel) so a proper, clean weld can be achieved.

While this might sound labor intensive, assembling the bed and welding the panels together for our project F-100 was accomplished in less than a day. Compared to modifying all the panels that are required to be sliced and diced to take the longbed sheetmetal down to shortbed specs, this process is not only much faster, but will result in a product that is ready to send straight to the paint shop, with minimal bodywork required. Spending a little more money up front, while saving a massive amount of time, labor, and money on the back end, makes assembling a new shortbed out of Golden Star sheetmetal a much more sensible approach.