I decided that welding up my cut up rear fenders was going to be expensive, and also I want to relocate the gas tank from inside the cab to the Blazer location between the rear frame rails, and to also be able to drop a camper on the back of the truck, so a stock Stepside bed was the solution.

To do this, I would need to move the rear wheels back to fit under the new bed which is not shortened. Unfortunately, my truck was originally a longbed so just putting the trailing arms back on and moving the rear end back to it's original location wasn't going to work. I couldn't do a long to short bed conversion either because all the original suspension is gone, and the back of the frame is cut off. I would need to get another shortbed frame and do a long bed to shortbed conversion using it.

67-72 Stepside beds are unheard of at salvage yards and I never really liked the big step they came with anyway. I always liked the 73-87 Stepside's so I located a late 70's Stepside bed (with a fuel door even!) at a friend's salvage yard and picked it up for $250, and my friend at another yard had a shortbed frame he would sell me for $75 and the swap was on! Another friend who is a welder said he would be glad to help do the cutting and boxing in for the new frame, so it all fell together. I am giving my old "Shorty" bed to Kelly who is going to help me out with making the new factory style wood bed so the bed floor will be immaculate. This is what our club is all about, friends helping each other out, and we all get to do some pretty cool stuff like this!

Here are some pics of the new bed, new frame, and the frame swap. There are a couple of short video clips thrown in too! The new bed is just sitting on the new frame in the last pics, I need to install the Blazer tank, paint the bed, do some suspension work and install the wood bed before bolting it in.