Brothers Trucks Fleetside Bed Install - Rack 'em

We noticed a slight bend in one of the panels. While it’s not required, Danny grabbed a set of calipers and measured to see how far off we were. A little hammer and dolly work is all that was required to straighten the panel.

The header panel is the first piece to be installed. We began by bolting it to the bed floor via eleven carriage bolts.

The side bedside panels slide between the front panel and the bed floor piece. We will need to separate the two. Once the bed is assembled and aligned, it will be disassembled for paint and bodywork, so we used a metal putty knife. If the panels are already painted you may want to use a plastic one.

Installing the bedside requires two people; one to lift the panel and the other to align the panels and help slide it into place.

Once the panels have been lifted onto the bed floor, we slide the tapered pry bar into the front panel to hold everything in place.

Next, we inserted the bolt from the inside bed through the side body panel. We placed a washer, lock washer, and then the nut on it.

We continued down the panel, inserting the rest of our hardware before snugging each one up.

Next, we move inside and begin to align the bed floor bolts. Our tapered pry bar makes the job of aligning the pieces a lot simpler. You can see why you don’t tighten everything down until everything is bolted together.

The fit at the rear of the bedside, to the floor, was a little tight. Rather than using the palm of our hand to hit the bedside panel into place (which could possibly cause a small dent), Danny grabbed a tapered wooden block and wooden hammer and lightly tapped the inside of our panel until the alignment was dead on. We dropped the last few bolts in and were done with the driver’s side.

There are four hex bolts that connect the bedsides to the rear cross sill.

The passenger bedside goes in just like the driver’s side, followed by the tailgate.

Pictured here is our completed short bed, ready to be moved to our frame. But first, it’s important to do an initial check for square by measuring diagonally from one corner to the other. It may be necessary to rack the bedsides to bring everything to an acceptable tolerance before placing the bed on the frame. That’s why it’s important to keep all the fasteners a little loose. We only have the tailgate kit (PN TGCK72B) and the inner fenders (PN IWT5572) left to install but we will do those once we get the suspension installed and finished.