Do bed stiffeners just transfer stress somewhere else?

Ok so hear me out...my mechanical mind is thinking about bed stiffeners and is there any concern about if you take the flex out of the bed it could be transferring the stress to somewhere else on the truck? Need some mechanical engineering in here. I'm a doctor that deals with the body mechanics and this happens in the body so logic says it would happen on the Tacoma as well.

 

Could be, but a number of people install when adding caps or tents that would make the flex designed in that much worse....

 

without any analysis - yes . but presumably you are trying to manage peak local stress, especially around stress concentrators (lile corners/cracks...) If shifting load around keeps you below endurance limit everywhere, then you have preveneted a potential failure. mode. idk if aftermarket stiffeners accomplish this successfully, but rearranging reactive force distribution could be beneficial.

 

Bed stiffeners spread new (additional to stock) loads to a wider area, to prevent stress cracks and bending in the corners.

 

Kind of

They increase the resistance to horizontal deformation, keeping the bed rail weight going down instead of down and out

 

I think they help with more of a lateral stress than a compression stress. When you have heavy items on top of the bed it tends to want to pull the bed sides out away from the floor and that back and forth are what ends up breaking the bed. One of the downsides of composite beds.

 

Think of loading the bedsides with a shell or rack like putting on a backpack, and then adding bed stiffeners is like having that backpack equipped with a sternum strap and a waist loop. It spreads the weight out to make the same load less stressful on any one part.

 

It's the metal that fails, not the composite bed. Not saying some of it may be avoided if it was built like an all metal truck bed... but just wanted to note this.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

This video is the best I've seen for actually showing what breaks without them.

https://youtu.be/_1fzA41Ouh8?t=7

 

My view of it is that we are changing the loading. Stock, there is a moment through the corner. With stiffeners, it becomes tension / compression in each member.

 

The stress gets transferred to your neck and shoulders

 

You're a lucky man John, You gonna get some tonight, for sure...

 

I installed a Leer cap in my brand new 2015 and had cracking in the exact place(s) Ryan posted above. Bed stiffeners stopped the cracks from spreading and the tailgate gap is much better

They do the job with no adverse effects

 

Get Total Chaos bed stiffeners. Super beefy and nice quality.


https://www.chaosfab.com/product/2016-2022-Toyota-Tacoma-Rear-Channel-Bed-Stiffeners-48676

 

Even driving on a bumpy but mostly smooth forest-service road the entire truck wiggles some. At the tailgate end the bed-walls have no stibilizing structural member.

You are not adding any more stress than is occurring already ... you are just putting most of that stress into angled steel braces which you can replace much more cheaply than the truck bed IF those braces fail.

 

Nice and beefy, yes. But get spare nuts that back the bolts that end up "inside" the tight-to-work-in braces inside the bed wall. My fists of ham dropped one or two down into the black hole just under the tail-light bay and needed to drive to Ace to get more to finish the other side of the truck.

 

I still need to buy some of these

 

Tell your wife the extra tie-down points can stabilize the flats of plant-seedlings she wants to bring home from Lowes or her favorite plant nursery.