Well, they're designed to never work loose, and they do that well. For as often as beds need to be pulled, I don't think its unreasonable for them to be one-time-use hardware. Ford does have them horrendously overpriced though.

 

You speak the truth! I just paid $115 for 8 bolts and 6 nuts! OUCH! My bunger hurts.

 

Did the same swap, and broke a few bits also. The other problem arises when you get new clip nuts from ford , as they are untapped and when they are installed with an impact they self tap. After cutting the heads off, I cut the bolts short so they would unclip from the frame. Then while the clipnut was in a vise, I used heat from a cutting torch working with visegrips to eventually remove the clipnuts, but 2 were toast. A trip to a screw supply distributor determined the thread pitch is 9/16 coarse, so for the back 2 boltsI used regular nuts. My new bed came with bolts, since I had asked for them if available.

 

The XTR stickers are a Canadian branding, like the F150 Lobo down in Mexico. Maybe the previous owner liked the look of the sticker, or brought the truck down from there. You can order them through Ford if you want them.

 

Great writeup and pics. Thanks for sharing! Be sure to keep this thread going with the cab corner repair and anything else you do Reps on the way.

x2 on the Kroil! That stuff is incredible.

 

Was going to suggest the same thing...some POR 15 should fix that right up...

 

We put anti seize on all the bed bolts as a matter of routine. FluidFilm on everything else. POR 15 on the frame.

 

The good camera broke just before the crew showed up to hoist the new bed on. I had to use my phone's camera for the rest of the pics.

I decided that since I'm going to have to pull the bed off again at painting time, I wouldn't do the POR15 right now. I'm going to wait until after I get a new door, and I pull the dent in the cab, because I'm going to pull the bed to paint it right.

So first off, I snapped all of the new nuts onto the frame rails:


Then we set the new bed onto the frame. Then I got out the impact wrench to drive the new bolts into the nuts. I was very happy to have air tools for this job since the nuts dont have threads tapped into em. The bolts went in really rought the whole way:


Once all of the bolts were snugged up, I re-installed the fuel filler neck, which involved the 3 little sheet metal screws, and swapping over the gas cap:



Next up was plugging in the wires. OOPS! Someon chopped off the connector from the new bed! So out comes the solder iron to swap the connector off the old bed onto the new one:


Lastly, I swapped the tailgates, since the gate on the new bed was in worse shape than the old one (That's what I get for buying as cheap a bed as I can find):



Here she is in all of here mis-matched glory:


It didn't take the youngens very long to take over the old bed:



This truck was re-imported to the US from Canada, so that makes perfect sense. Thanks for the info.

 

If you are going to take the bed back off to paint it why didn't you use regular bolts to hold it down then put the OEM bolts in when it is on there for good don't you think your going to run into the same problem when you go to take it off the second time?

Has anyone used bolts other than OEM to replace there bed? What did you use?

 

Good point. I'm probably going to have to spend another $115 on bolts when that point comes! Truth is, I thought of that, but the wife wanted her grocery-getter back for the weekend, so I was under a looming deadline.

 

The stock bed bolts are not regular Torx heads. They are Torx Plus TP45. You will notice that the regular Torx bits do not fit properly, which is one reason they break while trying to remove the bolts.

That said, I had no luck removing my bed bolts with the proper tool. The bolt heads started to strip out, so I cut them off with a cutoff wheel on a 4 1/2" grinder. I removed one by welding a large nut onto the head and using a powerful impact wrench, but that was more trouble than it was worth.

The stock bolts do indeed form their own threads. Google "Trilobular" for more information.

 

A few years ago I had to buy the plastic clips that hold the front bumper on a Honda. It required 16 clips and ran around $120 and those were just plastic.

 

You probably will... I had a similar situation with mine. Bought a new bed, and bought new bed bolts.... Put it on and a week later messed the new bed up worse than the old one. Went to take the new bed back off and had to grind 3 or 4 of the new bolts off.

 

Anyone have part numbers for the bolts?

 

how many do you need? they are 2 lengths, from the front of the 8 foot bed to the rear, it goes, long ,long,short,long. I have some spares.