High Quality - Heavy Duty - Hard Core

PROJECT ROXALOT
Fab: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6

Fab #4 16" Bed Bob

Since our project Toy is a long bed and we plan on rock crawling it, we need to loose as much from behind the rear tires as possible so that we wont be dragging it around and getting hung up.

We've seen as much as 19.5" taken from the rear of early long bed Toyota's, we decided on 16" since that was where the shackle on our buggy leaf was resting on the frame and the next day was Tabatha's 16th birthday (Rory's daughter).
We planned on sectioning the bed like most have done which leaves a seam down the side of the sheet metal between the tail lights and rear fender well. Mel, a 30 year body man was in the shop on this particular day and said, "hey wait a minute you hammerheads" and taught us how it really should be done... SEAMLESS!

Yes going seamless was more work initially but where it took longer to perform the sheet metal work we saved time in body work. Basically we removed the rear section (tailgate floor, tail light buckets) by drilling out the factory spot welds and using the air chisel to separate the metal from each other. A cut-off wheel was used only on the bed rail forward of the tail lights and to cut-off all sheet metal below the Lic plate bracket and around the sides.
We measured how much metal from the side panels needed to be removed but made sure to leave enough to roll the metal back into the tail light buckets to retain a stock look. The floor was an easy straight cut across. Putting it all back together meant welding the original spot welds back up, welding the bed rails together and the lower section of sheet metal that wraps from the rear to the side.

The only thing left to do now is the body work, cutting and welding are done!
Mel got to work rolling the sheet metal to match the original curve into the tail light buckets while the rest of us grinded welds and then John Sr. took over with light bondo work and some glassing. John Sr. worked his magic on rust holes, dings & dents while Mel showed the rest of us how to shrink sheet metal... a process used to take out high spots.

Take a look at the pictures, the bob came out beautiful and if you didn't know better you would think Project ROXALOT came factory with the bed that way.
This article is not meant as a "How To" so the finer details and steps were left out. If you would like 4x4Beast Fabrication to bob your rig's bed then contact us.

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VIDEO
Bobbing 1st half   Bobbing 2nd half