Flareside bed strips questions

Hi Folks,

Wanting to lean on the Flareside guys here. I sent a message to Reamer as well, in case he didn't see the pics here right away. I know he has rebuilt his bed already and that he did some extra work to his strips, so he'll know why I'm asking.

Those of you that have purchased new bed strips, did the end profiles look the these pics below? The edges of the humps are hanging just a hair below the flat bottom? Do they all look like this?

I'll explain why later, but I'm curious what brand these are...or if all of the aftermarket ones look like this? I thought that the edges hung much lower than this.

Looking forward to the discussion!  Not much to add yet, but this is on my radar as my first 'big' project on my flareside.

I actually don't have much to add here either unfortunately, but I pretty much hit a dead end trying to find out who made these particular strips. These ones are fine, and I'm actually going to use them (They're going for blasting tomorrow to remove the red paint). There's a bit of a story behind why I was looking for replacements, but it doesn't really matter on my part...it was just something dumb that I did (I do a lot of dumb things that usually end up being painful, or expensive, or both).

The issue is, and there is a bit of disagreement on this topic as I found out on FB last night, the later Flaresides came with plywood floors, and there were special "strips" used with them that sat flush on top of the wood. The problem is, that nobody makes aftermarket replacements for the strips that sit on top of the wood. It's probably a moot point since I'm sure 99% of people replace with the bed wood kits made out of boards since they're what's commonly available.

I'm going with a plywood floor, same as the factory floor was, and for no real reason in particular other than I prefer the look of the wider even spacing with the 5 strips instead of 6.

I'm planning on pulling the bed off the truck this coming weekend, so I'll be posting up some pictures at some point.

So I had these bad boys blasted clean yesterday. It wasn't my original plan, but I think these are going to work great on my plywood floor. I didn't realize it at first, but these strips are actually aluminum...not steel or stainless steel. I have no idea where they originally came from, but they're punched to fit my truck, and they're flush on the bottom, so they should sit nicely on top of the wood.



I'm going on a similar route as Reamer did with his Flareside, so I'll be replacing my plywood floor with plywood. The slight difference I'm making is that I won't be painting the wood. It will look similar to this floor below (pic stolen from a 1987 Flareside that was for sale on CL a while back).



Anyway, my interest and curiosities regarding the bed strips is over now, so I'll return back to my original project thread;).

Good plan, Stan.  

Here are photos of the original style Ford bed strips.
Notice how Ford curled over the outer edges to be flush with the center.
The replacement one I bought had the two outer edges just bent down, looking like fangs. I had the grind them down so the outer edges were flush with the center....

Reamer,

My original 5 plywood strips are all still intact for about another 24 hours...lol. They are surprisingly all still there...and the 3 middle ones are not even all that bad, but the outer 2 are really rotten and were repaired sometime in the past with metal flat bar on top of them.



The paint protected them well enough...some spots still show through to bare metal...



It is obvious that one of the main downfalls of these wood floors was the water pooling in the front of the bed. It is clear with my own, but I've seen many others that were all rotted out up front like mine was. I have no real intention of driving the truck in the rain or leaving it out in the weather, but I wonder if it would be worthwhile to consider a drain (or drains) up front to let the water out?

I know it does not help you but my metal floor flare does have drains up front.
The front panel sits on top of the floor ribs, that is where I have sheet metal bolts thru the panel into the high rib of the floor. The low part of the ribbed floor is the drains.

I wonder if you can maybe router out the end of the boards just under the front panel and use some kind of spacers where the bolts would be?
Or maybe router out between where the bolts are so you would not need spacers but still have drains?

Would like to see what you come up with.
Dave ----

With new wood and headboard, there is a gap on Right and Left side that acta as a drain....

reamer wrote

With new wood and headboard, there is a gap on Right and Left side that acta as a drain....

Is that because the headboard sits on top of the side panels to give the gap?
Does the headboard sit on top of the metal strips or the strips stop just before it?
Dave ----

Wood sits on headboard, But wood mounts under sides....

reamer wrote

Wood sits on headboard, But wood mounts under sides....

That has to be fun putting it back together must need 4 people LOL.

I did not know that if I did I might have done my headboard / floor a little different so I could use a stock headboard.
I think my headboard is a little shorter from when I replaced the rusted bottom to fit the sides & the metal floor.

If I was going to go with wood I would need to replace everything just like before the metal floor, all cross members, front & rear sills, and headboard, so nothing is lost.
Dave ----