58 Chevy Truck Tilt Bed
When I was setting up the chassis for this truck, with the narrowed 9" back there,
we figured out that as low as this truck was gonna sit, we'd never get the tires on/off....
So we decided to put a tilt bed on it....
When the bed's empty, and before I put the rack on it, the lifting force at the front of the bed was 250 #
Two guys could get it up, then one guy could hold it while the other put the steel prop rod under the bed.
It was a dangerous setup though, if the guy holding the bed ever dropped it before the other guy
got the prop rod in place, it would be like a guillotine....
NOT GOOD !!!
So I decided to work out a nitrogen strut arrangement.
The further you move back the higher the force becomes to lift the bed.
250 # will lift it right at the front, but further back, where I wanted to put it, the force measured out
at about 400 #. And I was going to angle it, and the more you angle them, the less vertical force
you will get out of the struts.
I decided on two 250 # struts, set at an angle to get a better fit, as well as to decrease the vertical
force when the system is collapsed and laying over at a flatter angle, and inversely putting out more
vertical force when the system is up and holding the bed up. The open force vertically works
out to about 425 #.
It took some messing around with the mounting points and angles to fine tune it,
but I finally got it right, and it works great!
I did this mod quite a few years ago, and had posted it online, but it got lost somewhere in
the bowels of the internet, never to be seen again....
So I just went out and took some new pix, it's all old and dirty under there,
this truck ain't no show queen, it gets driven hard and everywhere, and that bed carries it's
share of freight!!
No Way I'm gonna get these tires off, the wheel studs are 3" long
Oh, Wait, What's this shiney little handle behind the driver's seat?
When ya pull that little handle, nothing much happens, until you put your hand on the bed and lift slightly...
Then it floats up and stops here. Now I can change tires, and service the batteries....
The other end of that cable the handle is attached to goes to this bear claw latch...
The tilt rails under the bed rest on pieces of heavy plastic seen in this pix...
Another pix of the latch....
The matching part on the tilt bed frame that meshes with the latch....
The nitrogen struts, a pair of 250 # units....
Not a very good pic of the pivots at the rear of the tilt frame, just steel plate and large bolts....
A slightly better pic, the pivot bolt is out of sight at the bottom of this plate....
The tilt frame drops in along side the main truck frame....
The bottom of the struts are mounted on long plates hanging down from that cross piece,
you can see the right side one in this shot...
Yeah, I'm kinda "old school", runnin' rear leafs and slappers....
Tried to get a better shot of the bottom mounts for the struts....
If I need to get the bed tilted up higher than the struts will go, I can....
Look closely and you'll see a secondary subframe that the main tilt frame is resting on,
the struts are attached to that smaller subframe....
I usually have this 3,000 lb. scissors jack and that pipe and jack handle in the bed, just in case....
Works something like this....
High enough yet? It'll go even higher....
The tag is still in pretty good shape on one of the struts....
When I first put this all together, just pulling the latch handle would let the bed slowly float up....
But adding that aluminum boat and surfboard rack, and carrying a bunch of tools around in
the bed put a stop to that, it still comes up pretty easily and stays up until I want it down.
I just gotta remember to put the heavy tools in the rear by the tailgate.....
The worst part is the added weight, it already was a heavy truck, adding this
additional steel brought the parked weight up to just slightly over 4,000 lbs.
