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My father’s got a wooden tailgate on his F-250. I think he used thick pine for it, along with a pair of latches like one would use on a fence to hold it closed. I don’t have any pictures to post though. As far as mounting the lights on it, you could get some aftermarket trailer lights and mount them into the wood by drilling some holes and running wires to them. I don’t know if you know how to weld, but what you could do is make a frame from angle iron and fill it with wood, while making brackets on the sides for you to put the bed sides. That sort of truck is typically referred to as a stake body, if you wanted to search for some pictures on how they are put together.
As far as the lights/bed looking like a hack job, that all depends on how good you are at wood-working. I know if I did it, it would look like a total hack job, but the extent of my wood-working knowledge is putting an Ikea bookshelf together, so I’m not really one to ask about how to best build something like that.
i do know how to weld and i was thinking about doing just that as far as the sides are concerned. Thanks for the input, i will look up the stake body
There’s a guy in Pulaski, VA that always drives around and he has a flatbed truck made out of Lumber. He did a good job jointing the pieces and staining them. As far as I know it’s legit in VA and nobody has stopped him.
He has the brake lights mounted on the bottom frame which is visible in the current set up, but they are still high enough off the ground to be legal. Check the ordinances for your state when doing your lights, I know some states are pretty strict on how low or high the lights can be off the ground and the bumper, shouldn’t be a problem and unlikely somebody is going to pull you over for it… but always worth avoid that 75 dollar ticket to the court house.
Are you handy with framing and trim? If so you can build some pretty decent looking housing for the lights using smaller lumber and staining it to match. As far as removable slats, I’d say reinforce them with some square steel tube (pick up some at your local Lowes. Attach to sidewall/slats and create a mating end in the truck bed and some other secondary guarantee that they wont rip out the back and lodge into someone’s windshield (e.g some chain, hangars).
The other option is to get a more spiffy looking truck bed, go to your local junk yard and look for the bed of the truck, or if you know someone that welds you might be able to bribe them with some good beer to help out. The one other aspect to consider is this… whenever you significantly modify your car from it’s original manufactor’s design you will have to register it with a rebuilt license (small nominal fee, mostly red tape), have it inspected, and a new VIN assigned. I’m not a lawyer or someone qualified enough to venture a guess on whether this would require a “rebuilt/kit/conversion” license but it might. I’d make my first stop talking with a body garage for some details. Food for thought.
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