How to remove pickup bed

All I gotta say is that the PULASSSSTICKA bed in my truck doesn't get as hot as a metal bed.

.........So metal would not be good for sunbathing IMHO........

 

The arrow up myth comment ... directed towards which post?

 

Probably yours.

 

Hahah I'm just messing around. I think the bed's are fine. Me and my fab guy sat around talking for a good half an hour before deciding to bolt my fake roll bar to the bed and not the bed bolts, mostly so I could still have plenty of clearance to get my motorcycle in there, but also because that composite is some tough shiz and it will hold up just fine. Just gonna make sure to put plenty of plate underneath to even out any strain on the bolts going through.

 

I don't think that you are playing nice ... ... ha.

 

When I added D-rings to the side wall towards the front, I backed them with 4" x 4" x 1/8" stainless plate ... have torqued things with the least sign of stress ... I'd stand by the bed any day.

 

Yea, definitely gonna throw at least that much plate underneath the bolts. I like your idea of side D rings though. might have to look into that for holding the bike in place...

 

the ultimate tensile strength of a carbon composite is like 500 ksi, and 125 ksi for 4130 chromo... thats 4 times stronger...
Then when one factors in the density, a composite part has a strength to weight ratio 24 times that of 4130.
Plus composites have an infinite fatigue life, as long as they arnt pushed to the ultimate load.
The latest resins are much more UV resistant, even to the point that an aluminum part would fail from fatigue before the composite failed from UV degradation.

just thought I would help out with the s&%t storm heh

 

They should have just used titanium. Lighter than steel and corrosion resistant. Booyah.

 

Speak for yourself. If you do nothing but get crossed by tanks then it's pretty good.
But if you get crossed by freight trains, Aerospace trailers, ICBMs, Space shuttles, or anything else that needs to bridge substantially, the sorry, but the bridge is going to be an issue.
These plastic bridges have only been around for what, six years? Not enough time to determine what effect UV has on them. I don't care what the material is- unless it's metal, there is going to be some kind of UV degradation over time. I just sold my old Bailey bridge that my Axion bridge replaced, and it was 18 years old and going stronger than ever. Sure, the bridge looked like it had seen 18 years of heavy use. But despite scratches and dents and gouges, there were no holes I didn't purposely drill, and no rust, and no breakage. And I beat the living shit out of it, including driving over it to the point I snapped more than a couple of quality vehicle axles.
There is a fundamental difference between metal and anything plastic, plastic-based, "composite," fiber, or anything else. Metal may deform a bit when put under tremendous stress, but that deformation will occur long after any "composite" material would practically explode.

[...]

Now for the flamers about to get on my case about "Oh, you should have bought a full-size bridge, if that's what you're doing with it!" Why? So I can have a bigger bridge? It's still a bridge, isn't it? My old bridge was a Bailey bridge, nearly half the size of the Axion that replaced it. But damned if that didn't do everything I wanted it to (except hold more than two trains), and still asked for more. 3,500 bicycles? Yup- from east bank of the river to west. All my three-wheelers? Yup- all over the Waal River. Back-country adventures farther than most people with a medium girder bridge ever get? Yup- all over River Kwai. Ever have a problem with the bridge, or concern it couldn't handle what I threw at it? Nope. Cuz it was made of metal.
Metal > Plastic, or Composite, or whatever. Every single time. Unless your only criteria is weight.

 

LOL ^

 

Well, off that logic I guess I better rip out my POS composite bed and see if my fab guy can exactly replicate it with some steel plate...

 

Exactly, cause Engineers out there have no idea what they're doing with making a bed out of a composite material. I'm very confident that if you took stuff that is "breaking/cracking" the composite bed would seriously damage a standard sheet-metal bed.

Not exactly sure how you can say that something that is designed with the properties of metal while removing some of it's major weaknesses can be worse

The main reason metal is still used for a majority of applications is that the composite materials are much more expensive to produce and manufacture.

 

Yea, but after 20 years, my metal bed will merely be super scuffed up and dented and probably rusting. That composite will totally be cracking after 20 years of hard use, from all the dangerous UV rays hitting it all day long! Metal > composite ANY day!!!!

 

You copied your first post and changed the words around? Really?