Building a Custom C10 Aluminum Bed!

Indiziert: 2026-05-22

[00:00:26]All right, guys. We have a new build.

[00:00:28]Well, we have a build that's been started. This came from somewhere in Alabama. The shop has done an amazing job so far on some fab work. It's not exactly our style here with all the rounded and radius and but you can't knock the work that they've done. It's really nice. You can tell somebody put a lot of time, money, and effort into finishing out this engine compartment.

[00:00:52]It's an LS. We have a Whipple. There's already a lot of good parts here for the truck. It's a beautiful truck as it sits. It's on a roadster shop chassis, a bag chassis. They also did a ton of work back here. Again, not really my style, but you know, again, they did a good job. I probably would have just lifted the whole floor up and kept it flat here, but either way, it's brought to us and we have had the privilege to take the task to finish this truck and get it done. So, we're going to be doing a full interior, new wheels, finish some fabrication. Obviously, all the motor work along with the Whipple supercharger. As you can see, the transmission tunnel firewall still needs to be finished up. Uh, I have a long list of stuff, but either way, today's day one, and the first thing we're going to tackle is redoing the bed floor, but first, we have to rip out the old one.

[00:01:43]So, let's get to work.

[00:02:02]So, unfortunately, we did forget to film pulling out the old bed floor. Uh, as you guys seen when it came into our shop, it already had a fabricated C notch bump up. Somebody did a pretty nice job on it, but the customer didn't like it. So, we're going to redo it.

[00:02:17]But, we're going to be doing something a little bit more like we did in Dime Bag except for no wood. It's all going to be metal. We're actually using aluminum.

[00:02:29]So, first step, obviously, we already tore out the existing flooring and we cleaned up the bed sides and got down to the bare metal because we're going to be cutting up some inch and a half steel angle and welding it around the perimeter to give us something to set our framing on. We're going to be doing uh aluminum framing on a 1-in tube and building a nice hatch door and also a spot for our air tank and our management system. So, should be pretty sweet when we're all done. But first, we got to get some of the hard construction done and uh keep this thing moving.

[00:03:26]All right. So, we got our first piece of angle here. I went and profiled out here to match the uh stamping of the bed. I just want to get this as close to this face. So, we can see like this is kind of caved in. So, I want to cut a little more out and then just pull this so we can pretty much spot weld it to our angle. And then it's all flush.

[00:03:55]All right, we got all this ground out here and now we can can actually pull it in. I want to probably throw this on the plasma and just have it run a series of holes where we can spot weld and uh we'll just suck some cleos in there.

[00:04:09]Kind of just pull it as we pack it in.

[00:04:13]Heat. Heat.

[00:04:23]Heat. Heat.

[00:04:46]All right, we got our uh our bed framing coming together. This is the uh structural part of our bed framing. We still have a whole another frame we're going to be building out of aluminum tubing. But this is actually what's going to support not only the bed itself to the frame, but also is going to support the weight of our aluminum bed once that's built. You need to have some kind of support system underneath it.

[00:05:22]That way you could walk back here or throw some materials. I don't know that you will, but Brady's got uh right now he's doing the two uprightes coming off of our roster shop chassis, which are not only holding our bed onto the frame, but also that's going to be the area where our billet hinges are going to be mounted to. Those things are pretty sweet. They're coming from Canada. I'm going to get a little bit more into that once we get those here. But we do have the in installation diagram, so we kind of know a little bit on how they're going to be mounted. So, we're able to kind of plan ahead for that. This open section here is going to be our our access or our hatch door. So, everything's kind of tacked in here right now. We still have a bunch of welding and cleaning up to do, but uh it's definitely coming together.

[00:06:15]Meanwhile, we also have Arton, our master fabricator. He's got the inner fender. So, Arton's got our driver's side inner fender out. And as you see here, there was a access cut for our steering linkage passing through the fender and it was just open. So, we wanted to close that off. So, he's got some metal metal work going on here, some templating. And he's uh basically encapsulating this whole area, making it look finished. Right.

[00:06:42]>> That's right.

[00:06:43]>> That's right.

[00:07:19]Hey, hey, hey.

[00:07:42]Hey, heat. Hey.

[00:08:02]All right, the baton has been passed now that our boy Brady has moved on. So, I am taking over where he left off. I see he's already got some supports in the front. And I'm going to go ahead and add some back here. I know this is not welded yet, but just looking at it's kind of flimsy. So, uh we'll probably come off the frame right here coming up to this uh angle. This is probably going to be a solid piece anyways and our door will open a little bit in board on the bed here. So, that's what I'm going to start with. Then, we got a bunch of welding and then we're going to actually start the fun stuff, the aluminum bed frame with our door. Let's get at it.

[00:09:05]Tell me.

[00:09:24]All right, we are ready to move on.

[00:09:27]Ready to start playing with some aluminum as the Australians would say it. We got our steel base, our structure, our heart, our meat and potatoes done. Still a little bit of welding to do kind of like underneath the frame, but I don't feel like getting burnt today. So, I'm going to wait for that. This bed could all come off and we could flip it over and we could get to all that stuff a little bit easier. But, uh, I'm going to I'm going to go ahead and start cutting up some aluminum. We have some 1 in square tubing, 8 in wall, I believe. So, we're going to be cutting. Sorry, that was loud. We're going to be cutting a bunch of square stock aluminum with mitered corners. It's all going to be getting welded together. I'm going to start with the perimeter of what we got going on here. And then I'm going to bring it over my welding table. I'm going to actually probably do it in some pieces. That way I can make it nice and square, weld it on my welding table, bring it over because if I make it all in one piece, I'm not going to be able to slide it in underneath these bed rails. So, I got a little bit of figuring to do, but we're going to start cutting some aluminum, getting it welded, and getting it done.

[00:11:06]All right, we got our first three modular squares cut, ready to weld.

[00:11:10]Well, ready to clean up and weld. So, now you kind of see what we got going on here. I do need to uh grind down that little bolt, the nut set or whatever you want to call that. That's got to go. So, we can uh slide that back a tiny bit.

[00:11:25]And we're going to be sliding the whole square towards the bedside about uh an eighth or so. That way we could uh if we when we make our metal panels, we could have a 1 in return or flange 90 going down and then they both could sit in here and I think that'll get a nice smooth look. So it'll be a seam and then we'll have a bunch of bead rolling. So I think it's going to look pretty sweet.

[00:11:48]So I'm going to go ahead and take these one by one over to my welding table, clean them up, get some tacks on them, and then we'll drop them in. Meanwhile, we're also cutting some angle that we're going to be welding onto the main frame.

[00:12:02]Little one inch, one and a half inch pieces that we'll weld on, and that's what we're going to bolt our frame into that angle itself. So, I think this is going to work out. So, we got these three, and then I'm going to have uh one here, one over yonder, and then of course, we'll have our back section, which should finish it up. So, I think we are moving along nicely.

[00:12:28]Happy.

[00:13:10]All right, we got our passenger side uh rear frame tacked together. Uh, I just wanted to uh point out because because these are going to be getting metal panels and they are sitting on top of the other frame, they need to be grinded uh sanded flat. So, the top weld and the bottom weld are going to be coming off.

[00:13:28]So, I did add a bevel in here. That way, we can get some penetration on our weld.

[00:13:33]The weld's going to get deep inside of that bevel and hold these together. That way, when I grind it down, it's not going to fall apart. Plus, we're going to get a nice beefy bead on this inside corner. And obviously on this outside corner which these two will not get ground down just the top and the bottom weld.

[00:14:11]Yeah.

[00:14:16]Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:21]Yeah.

[00:14:36]All right, we got the driver's side framing pretty much all done before I continue moving on that way. So, we got our center section centered on our bed.

[00:14:45]Everything's clamped down. So, I'm kind of going off of that. We want to make sure that the inside of our door is going to be square and true to every which way. So, we want it true and square up here, true and square back there. So, before I go moving forward with making any more framing, we're going to start attaching our framing to the steel. I've already welded on some uh little angles here. So, I got four on this square here. I got four back here on that one. So, now I'm going to go ahead and cut up some aluminum tabs. Get those welded on. And that's going to be our point of attachment. So, we're going to be throughbolting all of these uh aluminum frames down to our steel. So that way these little pieces could come out. So our gas fill is now going to be back here. I bought the LS Fab tail light door. So we're going to be filling our our fuel through this tail light, which means we have two doors, one and two on the other side, that are going to be either eliminated or we're going to utilize them for something. He thought maybe it'd be a good spot to put like a battery charger. So, we got two terminals, positive, negative, and possibly over there, we might do a fitting to fill up the air bags just in case the air system kind of goes out.

[00:16:01]So, with that being said, I thought this would be a good spot for a battery box.

[00:16:06]So, being that these are all individual little pods, I'm going to be making a door here and maybe one on the other side for storage cuz this is all just dead space. So, we might might as well utilize it. So, if our battery terminals are here, this is a good spot for our battery. So, I think that's going to work out pretty nice. So, I'm going to go over to the plasma table. We're going to cut up a bunch of tabs. Already got them all marked. And we'll get all of our tabs welded onto our frames. And then we'll start through bolting and getting everything nice and true and square.

[00:17:00]All right, we're moving along with our aluminum framing. At this point, pretty much all of it is cut. This section here is the only thing I still have to weld together. We also have all of our mounting tabs welded onto the aluminum.

[00:17:29]Everything's clamped together and ready to drill. So, I'm feeling pretty confident. Everything's pretty square.

[00:17:35]We got just enough gap in between all of our frames to allow a flange to dip down inside. Two flanges, as a matter of fact. So, if we do them in sections, our paneling, uh, we could have a 1/2 in flange going down inside of each gap.

[00:17:51]So, at this point, I'm going to go ahead and weld this guy up. And then we have one more frame that's going to sit back here.

[00:17:59]And then we could start the door frame.

[00:18:01]I went ahead and ordered some billet bed hinges from LS Fab. Also got some actuators. So, this thing is kind of shaping up here. I know it's probably a little overkill with two frames like this, but it's the only way I could think about doing it without showing any fasteners and making it look real nice.

[00:18:21]So, I'm going to get that one welded up.

[00:18:23]We'll get that one done. We'll get all these mounting points drilled out, get some bolts in them, and then we may start looking into starting our little cubbies. So, we're probably going to put a cubby here, one over there. So, he'll have our battery and some storage maybe here, too. I don't know. We'll see.

[00:18:42]Let's get this stuff welded together and move on.

[00:19:01]Heat. Heat.

[00:19:10]All right. Now that we got all of our framing done, bolted down, everything looks good, it's time to start some paneling and compartments. So, I'm going to start with the compartments cuz they're going to be a little bit more tricky. And it's going to kind of set the tone as far as our layout as far as like bead rolling goes. And once we get these two in position, then the center will fall into place. We want to make sure that all our paneling is going to be nice and straight and square. That way, when our door goes in, everything's going to be lined up and look real nice when the doors closed and stuff. So, uh I'm going to start here on our driver's side battery box. I was hoping to put two batteries in this one box, but I think it's going to be too tight and it's going to be super heavy. So, customer did agree that he would like a storage on that side as well. So, what I'm going to do is put a battery in that side, leaving him some space to store things such as like cleaning supplies, towels, miscellaneous little id odds and ends while he's cruising around. So, I'm going to be adding uh a little support here to our frame. And I got some half in material that we're going to use to support our panel, which will be part of our box. So, I'm going to go ahead and pull this frame out. We'll get these welded on. I already made a template for the uh top section of our box. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to do it in one piece or or possibly two pieces. The box and then the top panel. Probably going to do it that way. possibly then weld it on to the top flange plate if you will.

[00:20:58]Still got to decide how deep I want to go. I don't want to go too deep because then you're going to be reaching in if you ever got to pull the battery out.

[00:21:04]So, I don't know. I may just go about 12 in deep. I think that should probably be enough. 12 to 15 in. Let's get this first one rocking and rolling and we'll kind of feel it out and see what we're going to do.

[00:21:37]All right, we got our first blank cut.

[00:21:40]This is on the plasma table.

[00:21:42]I basically just used my template here and added a couple flange dimensions added on to the blank. So, we're going to be marking out our bends. 1/2 in on most sides and then 1 in on the on the inside. We'll be cutting the corners out, getting them bent. And then we got a couple things we're going to have to kind of cut away at. Like this is the back of our bedside. It's got this weird little profile. So, that's going to get cut out and then hopefully this thing will pop right in and uh I'll be a happy boy.

[00:22:34]Heat.

[00:22:44]Heat.

[00:22:57]Okay. Okay.

[00:23:15]All right. That's not so bad. Uh I do have like a little maybe 16thin gap here, but I'm going to be welding that flange. that's continuing along this back side along all this and close it all in. So, that should close up that gap. So, that looks pretty good. What I'm not happy, and that's not going to work, is our 1-in flange.

[00:23:37]The I guess the width of this is not long enough. So, fortunately, I'm going to have to cut this flange off or remake this piece. Bummer.

[00:23:50]Well, that's what's good about metal.

[00:23:52]you can weld and clean it back up. So, also got this one pretty close. I already did the driver's side. That one's kind of done. I'll show you guys.

[00:24:04]So, this one I didn't cut on the plasma table. I cut strips and welded it together cuz I was going to bead roll and then I did like a practice bead roll on a on a little piece cuz I wanted to try to keep my bead roll square since this is a square body and there's not too much radius going on with this bed framing. But it didn't really come out good. But uh this one's done. As you guys see here in this back corner, I welded a flange all the way back around.

[00:24:35]So that looks real nice.

[00:24:37]This is pretty tight.

[00:24:40]So, this one's good. Got to fix that one a little bit.

[00:25:00]All right. Now that we got the perimeters of our battery boxes done and they're fitting great, now we're going to go ahead and have Arton make the actual box where our batteries are going to live.

[00:25:40]Heat. Heat.

[00:26:03]Heat. Heat.

[00:26:11]Heat. Heat. N.

[00:27:06]All right, we're moving along with our metal paneling. We got the passenger side done from front to back. Arton's got our front little panel box out.

[00:27:18]Oo, we got a wiggle going on. It's Monday. He's happy. Arton's going to start making our boxes and I'm going to continue. I got uh these two this panel here left to make and this back piece.

[00:27:31]So, I'm going to be making it in two pieces. That side I made in three. I don't know why, but I'm going to make it in two just to make it a little simpler because these are pretty complex right here around our uh fender tub. But this side came out great. Happy with it. So, we're going to kind of do the same thing over here. Already got my template made.

[00:27:49]I'm going to start with that front piece and then work my way towards the back.

[00:28:00]Take me higher.

[00:28:05]Take me higher.

[00:28:08]Take me higher.

[00:28:10]Take me higher.

[00:28:16]Take me higher.

[00:28:18]Take me higher.

[00:28:21]Take me higher.

[00:28:26]Take me higher.

[00:28:29]Take me.

[00:28:32]Take me higher.

[00:28:46]All right, we got all of our surrounding panels for our bed done. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to wait for my center door section until that box is complete.

[00:28:55]So, he's got this box out or this panel out. Making a box right now. So, while he does, I'm going to go ahead and get in here on our our inside bedside, the skin. I got to cut a little access out on this because we're going to be turning our fuel field door into a charging station. Uh that way we can charge our battery. Just pull the door open. We got two terminals that are going to be sitting here. So, I got to make some kind of box to mount those.

[00:29:23]Uh, so while he's got it out, I'm going to go ahead and cut this section out.

[00:29:27]It's already marked. And we'll start laying out a box for our terminals.

[00:29:47]Heat. Heat.

[00:30:09]Heat.

[00:30:23]Heat.

[00:30:45]All right, the battery terminal box is in. I think this is a great idea for this spot. Actually, my customer was the one who suggested it. So, I ran with it and I think it came out super cool and it's and it's really close to the battery. So, uh it worked out real well.

[00:31:01]So, that is going to be the end of the episode. All the major fabrication work has been done on our bed floor from our steel framework, our aluminum framework, and all these aluminum panels. Next episode, we're going to be finishing the bed with our custom hatch and all the other little details that go along with it, like our doors for our battery box.

[00:31:24]We do have something super cool coming for our our hatch itself. We got some uh custom perforated metal getting cut. So, we're going to take you guys to another shop in the area, showing you all the work that it takes to do uh laser cutting from start to finish. And as you guys see, we already got our billet scissor hinges put in and our frame. So, all that work's going to be on the next episode. So, make sure you guys subscribe so you don't miss out. And hey, don't forget to buy a t-shirt.

[00:31:52]Father's Day is coming up. Your dad wants a t-shirt. I know he does. We'll see you guys next week. Later.