My 87 xtra cab has a cab in excellent condition but the box is rotten and not worth repair. I was thinking of building a flat bed of somesort for it. Does anybody have any experience or advice on this or maybe pictures or whatever. I have access to welders, cutoffs and material etc.

I'm in the process of building one out of some steel c-section . I had the steel donated to me from my work (part of some old framework our new CNC Lathes came packed on).

It doesn't look too hard so far. I've welded the frame up already. The dual cab ute I'm building it for has a tray on it that measures 1.6 metres long and 1.5 metres wide, so I've just copied vethat. I'm just waiting (saving up) for some aluminium checker plate to bolt on for the liner.

What I have thought about and will probably design at a later date is some drop-sides for it. I will build them from thickish gauge angle iron and cross brace them simular to vehicle ramps. I'll mount them with quick release hinges and drill the ends so they can be joined together. So when I remove the L & R side and can join one to the front and one to the rear gate so I have have two 3.1 metre ramps to load stuff onto the back <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

I will post pics when I finally get my funds together and it looks less like a dodgy rectangular frame.

One tip I got from work is to weld it together with a stick welder rather than a mig welder. Stick welds are meant to penetrate deeper and be stronger.

A few of us here have built our own, and I have built one for my '91. Since you have access to welders and cutters, materials, you are halfway there. All you need to do now is design one, and buy the steel. If you design it carefully, you can avoid using heavy guage and large diameter steel.

A few companies also sell flatbed kits, All-pro Offroad is one.

rustylux

Glad to here you got the steel for free.

Here are some of the early pics. I have since added a covered wagon style frame over the top which will be tied into the exo-cage, and I have added the a rear swing out gate/tire carrier.



I have plans for battery storage, spare driveshafts, air tanks, etc., in the dead space underneath the flatbed.

Bloody hell... thats one elabourate flatbed right there. I really like the shape/design of it. I bet a bit of time and alot of swearing went into that. Well done.

Mine will be ALOT more basic than that. Just one query though.. here in OZ that tray would be illegal because the tail lights are obscured. You need to be able to see them from 45 degrees either side or something like that. Are there laws regarding that over there or is it pretty much open slather?

Sorry for being a post stealer <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

Thanks, I had been wanting to do a flatbed for some time, just hadn't had the opportunity, until I came across the '91. It was a farm truck and the bed was dented pretty bad. I had originally planned on fixing it and selling it, but then I decided to build me another trail truck.

Not too much swearing was done until I got beyond the weight I could lift off by myself, not having a hoist made it interesting. I did spend a lot of time planning out the pieces for the base, so basically after cutting it all out, it assembled as a kit. Also moving from oneside to the other while welding kept warpage to a minimum.

The law here require the lights to only be visable from behind, most use round trailer lights screwed to the back. I wanted to do something different, so I used the dead space from the dovetail for the lights. I had to cut the rear lights down to fit the height of the rails down so I couldn't use the factory lights and retain the turn signal. I used Mazda lights, they use the same type of harness, I just had to move some of the pins around to get them to work with the Toyota harness. The mesh screen I used is open enough to allow the lights to be visable from the side.