1959 EL CAMINO BED LID TRIAL

I've got Ryno Line but think some planks would look awesome for the car shows my buddy wants me to start going to every week. I've been thinking about doing the same actually. I'm with jlCustomz, mainly becuase he DOES know what he is talking about and has the El Camino to prove it. Hopefully someone else will cime in with some affordable ideas they did themselves. I might even use cherry wood like on my dash & windowshelf, as seen in my photobucket pictures. One of my other thoughts was to adhere down wood laminate permanately & use thin carpet, such as speaker box carpet to cover when needed.I do some custom woodworking for a living, so I can do whatever I want myself whatever year I get time ,money ,& priority to do so. I would plane thinner & probably cut parts to lay flat in the bed profile.Probably would glue together into a few separate drop in pcs with something for sound deadening & padding on backside. I would stain & then spray with high solids automotive clearcoat. They would need to airdry for a while though. you can purchase 4' by 8' cypress fence planke around here for less than $5.00 each. One thought I,ve had here is some people have used cypress wood. Available at Home Depot.I,ve been wanting to do something with the bed for years now, but won,t pay that kind of price for a KIT that requires you do most of the work, And I don,t care to add too much weight. Note the aluminum angle shape we screwed on the back edge to clean that up. This is a tough surface but doesn't negate the need for a bed cover or weather will soon degrade it. We painted the boards with automotive catalyzed urethane clear coat and sanded and polished them as we would a body to bring out the beautiful Tigerwood grain. Bed strip bolts anchor it all together through holes drilled into the steel floor.

1959 EL CAMINO BED LID TRIAL

Once all the parts were made we trial fitted it all together. We had to glue up the Tigerwood to make the side boards that step around the wheel wells Here are the dimensions that need to be cut into the edges of the boards to fit the bed strips Then we machined up the bed boards to accommodate after market supplied stainless '53 Chevy pickup bed strips. These align with the bolt holes in the bed strips so thoses bolt go through these spacers. We used urethane adhesive, available at Home Depot. In retrospect we would have welded in a flush panel.Īfter undercoating the station wagon floor (that's what it is, Elky is built on a station wagon platform!) we glued down spacers made from that 3/4' imitation wood decking made from old poly soda bottles that served two purposes leveled out the base and spaced the Tigerwood floorboards off the steel to lessen water damage to both layers. We over thought this one and made a pan to drain water from under the floorboards. It was some European brand, don't recall the name but there are several on the market. It had heavy stiff for undecoating and lighter penetrating stuff for inside places like the rocker panels. We bought one of the commercial type undercoating systems and sprayed it in every nook and cranny we could find. scrape off all lose corrosion you can and soak it in converter, then coat it with undercoating. We rebuilt the floor of the smuggler's compartment, welded in a steel roof and opened it to the interior of the cab for more storage room. We sold the beat up bed panel from our '59 on ebaY and installed a Tigerwood bed. Easily removed with drilling out the spots and/or hammer and chiseling some of them.

1959 el camino bed lid