Afternoon and sorry in advance I am a bit of a novice when it comes to my truck and it's inner workings. I just started out working on my truck a few months ago after I purchased it adding external mods here and there as you can see in my avatar. My knowledge of cars/trucks in general and how they are constructed is limited but I do have a good grasp on things mechanical and how they can work togther. That being said I have tried looking in both the Service manual posted on the fourms as well as a Parts Diagram manual that I paid for online to try to further educate myself on the question I'm about to ask.

Does anyone know if the bed construction on the Quad cab is simply a series of MAJOR parts which are welded together and a series of SMALLER parts that are bolted together to form the bed which is attached to the frame with 8 or so bolts?

If that wasn't clear I can try to rephrase and again sorry I am not familiar with common truck lingo as I still very new to all this.

To further illustrate my question look at the diagram I have attached below:

Figure SND-240 shows the bed, front Box, a series of Cross bars



Then you have Figure SND-910 that shows a number of the components of the bed:

SweptlineBoxPanelOuterBoxandFuelFil.jpg

What I am wondering is...Are the Cross bars, left and right panels, Bed, Wheel wells and front panel all welded together or are they mechanically held together with nuts and bolts?

Thanks for your help guys.

 

they should all be welded together as a complete unit, the piecies in the diagram, are just replacement (crash) pannels, and can be replaced by drilling the spot welds out on the original, and re-welding the new one on

 

Dodgetruck got it... they are all welded together. And thats actually what they did to my truck back in 08 when I was rear ended. They replaced the entire box side and corner support, restoring it back to original

 

Yeah. agreed with both posts above! if you need further clarification go to your favorite body shop and ask them some of these questions. They should be able to explain how the pieces are welded together.

Also...why are you asking this question? We may be able to help you out more if you provided the reason you are asking :-)

 

ya all three guys nailed it

 

oh canadiandodge.

you like it when three guys nail it, dont ya?

hahahahahahaha....sorry, it was there.

 

Thanks for the quick replies guys. To answer your question popsnbeer, I had an accident where a steel rod filled with concrete shot at my driver side tail light and destroyed the housing. That seems to be a $50 fix but there was damage to the thin metal strap that either the tail light assembly mounts on or is used to support the tail light assembly, this all in addition to slight deformation of the actually side panel where the tail light assembly normally sits. What I was debating was the following:

IF welded...then:
1.) Probably take it to a body shop and have them fix the damage.
If not welded...then:
I WAS going to see if I could either buy an unpainted new side panel or find a good one at a salvage lot that was in good condition, repair it and install it myself.

Now since I don't have allot of experience with welding or the equipment to do so I am more included to probably have a body shop buddy of mine take a look at it.

TruckDamage013.jpg

:-(

Anyway thanks again for the quick question.

 

jesus effing christ...

can you PLEASE make those pictures SMALLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

No problem man, hope it all works out!

 

I reduced the size once and they shot up again for some reason. I reduced them again to 240 x 320 once more so Hit F5 to update your cache and they should be smaller. Sorry.