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In this episode of FullDroopTV, we fabricate a bedcage and install bypass shocks on Project
F-150. Then get Project Silverado's fenders into paint. FullDroopTV starts now. This episode
of FullDroopTV is brought to you in part by Sway-A-Way. Thanks for tuning into another
episode of FullDroopTV. Well, today we're going to be building a bedcage on our F-150,
so our rear suspension matches the travel numbers we have up front. Now, we've already
got our Deaver long travel leaf springs installed, but the factory shocks are what are limiting
the amount of travel that we can get out of the rear. You can see it's just a physically
shorter shocks so it's going to be the stopping point for us. Now, building our bedcage is
going to raise the upper shock mount location so that we can fit these 16" Sway-A-Way three
tube bypass shocks. Now the reason why we chose a bypass shock instead of a conventional
shock is these valves here will allow us to tune the shock once we get some testing time
in. So we're going to start with our lower shock mount. We picked up these tabs from
TabZone that we're going to be using for our lower shock mount. And I've bolted in the
shock misalignment spacers as well as a couple washers to hold the correct gap betweeen the
tabs so when I weld it, it won't distort and bring the tabs in.
With our lower shock tabs in place, we can determine the line of our Sway-A-Way three
tube bypass shocks. And we can tell by looking at this that we're going to be running into
this area which is the upper mount for the old shocks. So what we're going to do is cut
this off with our plasma cutter to make extra room, then I'm going to cut a plate that's
going to over the frame and over the hole from cutting this off. I've cut out this plate
to go over this section of the frame where we cut the old shock mount off. Putting this
plate up here and welding it in will add a bunch of strength to this section of the frame.
To run our shocks up through the bed, we're first going to have to cut a hole. Now every
truck and every bed is a little bit different, so my suggestion would be to start small.
You want to mark a smaller hole first, cut that area out, and then work from there out
to until you get the correct diameter, that way you don't cut a huge hole in bed. Now
every bedcage is going to be different. The shock mounts is a different location, the
shock mount on the axle might be pushed back, it all depends on what type of shock, what
diameter shock and the angle that you're running. So with this, we're going to start with this
area here I'm going to drill a couple holes and get this cut out. The bed of our F-150
has two mounting holes that go down into the frame. We're going to use these two bolt locations
for the base of bedcage. So what I did is I cut this piece of inch and three quarter
120 wall tube and capped the end and drilled it. Then I'm going to take the factory bed
bolt, slide it in place, and bolt in. Then with this plate, I'm going to slide it into
place, and that's going to serve as the base structure for our bedcage. With that tacked
in place, I can remove these two bolts, take this piece over welding bench, well then we'll
fabricate the entire structure. We're going to be creating an upright that comes off of
this base to hold the top part of our shock and create a mounting point for it. Instead
of just welding that directly to this bottom plate, we wanted to box this lower structure
to create a firm foundation for that upright to mount to. So I bent up a couple pieces
that are going to sit in here like this, and this top plate will go up on top and cap all
that off, this will provide us a nice firm foundation for that shock upright.
I'm using some magnets to hold the shock in place so I can make my templates for the upright
portion of our bedcage. I've also cut out these pieces of inch and three quarter tube,
capped them and drilled them to provide me with a bolt location for the top of the bedcage.
This is a poster board template that cut out and this is actually going to one side of
the upright. It'll be one here, and one on the inside as well. I'll get these transferred
on to some sheet steel and cut out. We're using our 12 ton in conjunction with our Pacific
Customs dimple dies to create some flared holes in this piece. We've got one side of
our upright tacked in place. This is the other side, as you can see I had to put a break
in the top section. The reason I did that is I want to be able to run the bolt straight
through the shock and since the upright is on an angle, this corrects that pitch so can
run the bolt straight through. Once I get this tacked in place, we're going to run a
2" tube on the backside to keep everything square. Then I can unbolt the shock and remove
the upright so I can take it back over to the welding bench to add the boxing plates.
I've tacked in the back boxing plate, this piece that I cut is going to go in the front.
And that's going to add strength to the entire upright. Once I get these tacked in place,
I've cut out a template that's going to up here on top, to box in the top part of our
upright. Now that is going to have a relief cut in it so the shock fits in.
With our upright bolted in place, we don't have enough support for the shock using just
these two factory bolts. So we're going to add a third mounting location back in this
corner of the bed, just like you see here. I ran a piece a two inch 120 wall tube, bent
it over to a mount that I created that welds into the frame underneath. Now to create that
mount the first place I have to start is by cutting a two inch hole in the bed. I've cut
and capped a piece two inch 120 tubing and drilled it for a five-eighths bolt. That's
going to go in this location here. Now to tie it into the frame, I'm going to notch
a piece of tubing that's going to go from this point over to the frame and weld in.
We're here at Worldwide Auto Body and they're going to be spraying our Fiberwerx bedsides
and fenders for us for our Project Silverado. But before we get them in the spray booth,
they had to do a little prepping on them. Now they started the process using 3M 180
grit sandpaper on a long board to make sure everything was smooth and flat. Once that
was completed, they took ProSpray primer primed all the fenders and bedsides, once that was
dry they moved on to wet sanding. Now for the wet sanding process, they took 3M 400
grit sandpaper, did that once over all the panels, then they moved on to a 600 grit sandpaper,
then an 800 grit sandpaper. Now once all that was done, they scuffed them up, cleaned them
up, now it's time to get them in the booth. Worldwide Auto Body owner Ricardo Calderon
used the paint code on our Silverado to mix up his ProSpray paint and laid down two perfect
coats of color. After the first coat of color, Worldwide Auto Body wet sanded our fenders
and bedsides, before spraying on the second coat of paint. They finished up the process
by laying down four coats of clear. The final two tubes of our bedcage are going to tie
the uprights together. There's going to be one tube that runs from the bottom along the
bed over to here, and another that runs from the top of the upright over to the other side.
I put a couple slight bends on either end of the upper crossover tube, just to keep
it in line with the lower tube. Which we kept straight. Once I get this lower tube tacked
in place, we're going to unbolt the bedcage, take it over to the welding table, and finish
all the welds. We clamped the rear mounts of the bedcage to the welding table to help
prevent any distortion while finish welding. There are a few more spots to finish welding
and the bedcage is ready to go back in our F-150. FDTV Talk is presented by Prerunner
Manaic. Welcome to FDTV Talk where we answer your questions on air. And today's question
comes from Mike and he asks, "I was just wondering, with all the action cams on the market, which
one would you recommend for off-road use?" That's a great question Mike, and with so
many action cams on the market right now, it's hard to make sure you're getting the
right one for your application. Now, for us here at FullDroopTV, we like the Adixxion
by JVC. You can see it's got a built in LCD display so you can see what you're shooting,
it's got built in WiFi so you can get a free Android app or iOS phone app and remotely
control your camera and view it from distance away. Now another term that JVC created was
call quad-proof. And what's that mean to you? That means it's waterproof up to five meters
deep, it's shock-proof so it can sustain a drop from up to two meters high, it's dust
proof and freeze proof, so this is the perfect camera for off-road use. It's also very versatile
in the way it mounts with locations on the bottom and the side, and in our next couple
episodes, we're going to put these cameras to the test. We're going to show you just
how we mount them on our prerunner and also share footage that we get from using these
cameras. So I hope that answers your question Mike. If you have any questions about these
Adixxion, visit FullDroopTV.com And remember, if you've got a question that you want answered
on air, visit FullDroopTV.com and click on the FDTV Talk icon. And remember we've only
got a couple more episodes to go, so get your question in today. Fabrication's complete
on our bedcage and we've got our Sway-A-Way three tube bypass shocks all mounted in place.
Now when we were designing this bedcage, we had three key features that were a must have
in it. It had to be bolt in so that we could send it off to powder coat at later date.
We had to maximize the amount bed space we have, so we tucked everything as close to
the bed rails as possible, and the third thing, it had to have a consistent theme with the
rest of the fabrication that we did. You saw this flat plate with flared holes that we
used here was the same that we did on our rear bumper as well as our front bumper. Now
in our next episode we're going to head to the desert to get a little tuning time done
on these bypass shocks that we got from Sway-A-Way. So remember, if you have any questions or
want more information about the products that we use in this episode, visit FullDroopTV.com
So until next time, we'll see you in
the dirt.