Metalox How-to Video Shorten a Long Bed C10 1967-1972

[Music] I'm Kyle augsburger my company's metal-oxide vacations this is gonna be your in-depth guide on cutting 67 to 72 c10 bedsides as you can see here here's the said that we just cut down and then here's the set in their long bed form and the process I'm showing you today we're gonna minimize the paint damage and metal warpage so if you want to keep your original patina and leave the lines that'll be an option with the method that we're using the bed sides will end up being the exact same spec as if they were a real short bed so they're in a change with the short bed bed floor or a short bed chassis or however you end up doing the rest of conversion but they'll be exactly as if they were stopped [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this is a 68 long bed we're gonna bring it we're gonna cut it down to factory short bed specs it will change out and bolt in just like it was a real short bed and I'll be interchangeable with any short bed parts so if you're gonna use a short bed floor we're gonna start off by plotting out all the cuts and that's probably one of the most important parts you can only cut it once so we're gonna give you all the exact measurements and show you exactly where we cut it so on this particular bed side we're doing a demo for somebody to added a aftermarket field or fortunately we're gonna cut all that out of there anyways it's gonna be within our Cove inches so you probably won't see this on your truck but that's just a bonus on this one we're getting rid of that all right so on these bed sides are gonna use the factory mark lot as a reference mark for your first cut in your first tape line so you're gonna want to go right to this edge right on the flat side I'm gonna pull the tape and you want to go just on the flat side of that line of that marker light we're gonna pull it right to this edge where this tailgate relief is your tip should be parallel with that so this top piece of tape is gonna be your base for where you're gonna pull the rest your measurements for the rear cut so you want to give yourself a little bit of overlap so you know you're pulling straight and if you pull this straight the tape should overlap the existing piece exactly pull straight down so if you have a 67 truck they didn't have a marker light so you're gonna need to give yourself that same reference point in space on the bedside so all you got to do is just give yourself a measurement it's pulling a quarter inches from the edge of the taillight so you're gonna give yourself a couple measurements cut a straight line and then the bottom of the market light is gonna be at 15 inches so just you would just mark yourself a Sharpie a little L four and a half and then 15 up in the bottom and then you pull the same lines just like we did okay now we're going to make our marks for our second tape line it's gonna be eight inches from the inside tape line that we had previously laid down so every every few inches you're going to give yourself a little check mark eight inches over and then right at eight inches make yourself another mark and then you're gonna want to make sure this square is square with this line or else it's gonna change the length of it and then you're gonna go down the whole bed side then we're going to continue all the way up marking the reference mark eight inches away from the first line all the way to the top of the bedside and then making sure that we're perfectly square now we're gonna pull tape off based off of these check marks and I I split it right down the middle so it's exactly right in the middle of my mark marker line see I cut the line in half all right when you come over the top and continuing to follow our lines okay at the top of our bedside we're gonna have to offset this top cut line do you see right now if you're gonna cut it now would cut right through the center of the stake pocket and that wouldn't work so and also if you'll notice on the 67-72 it's a lot taller at the back of the bedside and it is at the front or the body line is if we were to straight cut this when we get back together you'd have a offset and you see that in the panel so we're gonna do a cut across the body line so that when we bring back together everything will line back up and that's also going to get us around the stake pocket so we're gonna lay those lines out now all right now we're going to mark out where we're gonna offset the upper cut the upper half of the cut so from the inside line again we're gonna measure over five inches and that's how much the cuts gonna jig jog five inches my interest I'm in tears that and you only need to go just to this over the hump and then you're fine all right now we're going to pull a piece of tape on the backside of your reference marks now if you look you'll see gonna be exactly five inches from this inside line to this one all right now off that piece tape we just pulled we're going to mark over eight inches to give us our second cut the same thing we're just new reference marks all the way up til we get over the home so we're gonna do now is pull the tape line on this end of the the front side of our reference mark so now you'll see you got exactly eight inches between these first two sets of tape and then same thing here exactly eight inches between these two now we're going to mark our tape for the horizontal lines all right now we're going to give ourself our reference marks where we're gonna go off for our horizontal cuts so on the rear I like to use a thin tape measure just because it's a little bit easier to contour around the curve of the bedside so from the bottom edge of our tape we're going to put the tape and then we're going to mark up 25 and a quarter inches so you can see you pull the tape 2500 we're gonna make a reference mark on our back piece of tape now again on our inside cut line we're going to pull a piece of tape we're gonna go 26 then 1/8 we're gonna give ourselves just a little reference alright now we're gonna pull our top reference lines so we're gonna hook the top of the bed side we right up to five and thirteen sixteenths of an inch and we're gonna make a mark and that's gonna be the same for this one five and thirteen sixteenths all right now we're going to connect the dots of the reference are so you made so on the front I just cover off our dots we made and the reason why I cover up the dot is because this is where we're going to cut the bedside so if we go on this side of the dot on this one and on that side of that on that one we're gonna end up with a wider gap so that just gives us a little bit more play room and then on the back same thing we're going to cover the dots from the top down all right this may look a little confusing now we're gonna take a razor blade and make it all make sense so I'm gonna start peeling the pieces of tape that we don't need so let's give me your first cut on the back I'm gonna trim out of the middle now the center portion is gonna be the portion that gets removed and then I like to take a sharpie and the mark little arrows along the line we're gonna cut just so you don't get confused and cut on the wrong side of the tape do that all the way down all right now we're gonna do our front lines front reference marks it's a lot less complicated than the rear so we're gonna pull the piece of tape just the width of the tape off the edge of the bedside this is 36 millimeter masking tape and we just go right off that front edge as our reference line all right now from the back edge of this tape we're gonna measure over 12 inches just like we did on the rear except for 12 instead of 8 and then you want to make a check mark up and down the whole bedside every couple of inches just so you have a good straight reference point now we're gonna pull our line for the rear cut using those marks you just made I'm gonna put the tape on the backside of those check marks all right so now we're gonna offset this top cut as well go around the stake pocket and the reason why we offset it instead of just cutting the whole thing in front of this for a straight line is because on the edge of the panel the panel is a lot stronger so when you weld it back together you're gonna have a lot less chance of it warping if you keep all your cuts as far out as you can and it's also more aesthetically pleasing I think if you're gonna keep your patina having that cut towards the edge of the panel that's supposed to down the middle all right now we're gonna make our offset marks we're gonna go six inches over on the top of this bedside just keep yourself unmarked there one more work here off that inside line pull a piece of tape between those two dots you made all right now from the song we just made inside of the tape line we're gonna measure over 12 inches and same thing gonna go on the front side of the line so I wait in between these two pieces of tape is exactly 12 inches just like it is right here all right now we're gonna make our horizontal line so we're just gonna go right on the edge of this panel I'm hedge that radius pull a piece of tape and we're gonna take our square and line it up with that piece of tape and then draw a line in between these two pieces then we'll redo that line we'll just pull a piece of tape right all right over that line then we'll take our razor blade and we'll trim the tape that we don't need and then this middle portion again like at the rear represents the push we're gonna remove and then same thing give yourself some marks so you know what side of the tape to cut on now that we got all our tape lined out before we cut the bad side we're gonna double check that it's exactly 12 inches between the two pieces of tape and you want to check this throughout the whole bed side this is your measure twice cut once and then you want to do the same thing on the rear cut all right now we're gonna cut I just use a standard cutoff wheel this one is reversible it just kind of makes it nice so you don't throw sparks in your face and you want to use the thinnest discs you can get your hand on and you want to cut it as you know you don't want to burn you want to be right on the edge of that tape because that'll bring you exactly 12 inches so we're going to cut [Music] [Music] all right once we cut our outside cuts we're gonna flip the bed side over and then Mark her inside cuts so once you've cut through the outer panel you'll notice on the top you cut through the both the inner and the outer these cuts are gonna represent our reference marks or we're going to plot out our inside lines all right so now we're gonna take a square this is the front of the bedside we're gonna go to that rear cut line I'm gonna line up the square with the back cut line and then this line is gonna be our first line that's going to give us our measurements for the second one all right I'm gonna pull the tape line right over that sharpie line we just made you can see the edge our tape is right at the edge of that cut so the cuts gonna stay consistent with the outside now we're going to measure 12 inches over at several points throughout the line we will pull a piece of shape on the front side a little marks and then we're going to mark on the inside of that side of the tape and this portion will be removed all right now we're at the back side of the bed we're going to the exact same thing we're going to pull a piece of tape on the front side of that line and again our tapes right even with that cut line we're going to measure over 8 inches then we're going to pull a piece of tape on the backside of those marks and then our tape is gonna hit right on that cut line where it came through alright now we're gonna cut on all of our cut lines [Music] all right now we're gonna clean the edge of the metal where the weld joints gonna be we use a thin abrasive disc so it keeps the bed scar small [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right now we're gonna clamp all the pieces back together and do our fitment before we weld it up so I like to start with a wide vise grip and then we just use standard Butwell and clamps for the joint then I'll throw two of them on the inside and then I'll do the rest of them on the outside so you're gonna have to spend some time getting it all to fit nicely just adjusting your clamps until you get a nice consistent line and then the most key thing is you want all your Pamela heights to be the same all right now we got everything clamped in place we're going to start tacking it all together I use like a small pen screwdriver if there's any inconsistencies where we need to like pull it up as we're tacking it the main thing is you want to strip these panels totally flush [Music] all right so when you get to the bottom of the joint on the rear seam you're gonna notice the bedsides a little longer from the portion cut out so once you get to about the point of the curve you're gonna want to stop welding and they're gonna want to form the lower half of the bedside don't try to force it with a clamp I've actually been the head side so it lines up so I'll throw a couple tacks on it and then we'll bend it I'll just take a pair of pliers and vice grips then we'll just cut off that excess yeah now that we got the top side all tacked up we're gonna flip it over and then do the same on the inner all right we've got all tech back together now it's time to finish weld it there's two ways you can do it you can either go real slow and cool off your welds or I like to do it I just go hot and fast those hot as I can get it as fast as I can go whatever welding style you're more comfortable with that's up to you but that's how we're gonna do it on this one [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] all right we got it all welded up now that's ready to grant a smooth we're just gonna use a regular angle grinder with a roll lock 36 grit disc nothing fancy we're just gonna try to focus on granny just the well but not the metal around the world [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] as you can see the section we removed did remove the portion with the marker light if you want to keep the marker light on your short bed conversion and that would be the time where you would cut it out and then trace that marker light piece that you cut out cut a hole and then weld it back in just like we will do the rest of it we're not doing that on this bedside but if you made it this far I'm sure you can figure out how to put the market lighting all right now that you've seen the process on how we cut down these bed sides if at any point during this video you felt like there's something you couldn't handle or you're not comfortable doing the job we do do these these jobs or customers will shorten your whole truck we do full builds we do bed sides you can ship in to us go on our website metal oxide vacations calm our emails there are contact infos there so just hit us up if you need a hand you

Channel: Metalox Fab

Views: 11,813

Keywords: shortbed, longbed, c10, truck, chevy, how-to, metalox, surgeon, step-by-step

Id: KwVX-jjfUwM

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 08 2022