Bed swap

Both my CUCV M1008 K30 have sleeves on front bolt between flanges of C .

Matt69olds said:

Bingo. Looks like we have the same issue. My truck is a 81, the bed is a 77. I’m drilling holes in the frame to match the bed. Thanks!!!

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i have a 78, 80, and 83/84 or whatever+ bed that i could measure bolt holes that were original. i couldnt show the hardware, none of them have original stuff just bolts, washers, etc my grandpa threw in when they were off for whaever reasons.

Matt69olds said:

Bingo. Looks like we have the same issue. My truck is a 81, the bed is a 77. I’m drilling holes in the frame to match the bed. Thanks!!!

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I went the other way around. my truck is a 77 and put an 81 bed on mine, I had to drill the holes as well. I went through both the top and bottom of the c channel and used the long bolt that came in the LMC kit. No issues

Waylon said:

My 85 truck didn’t have sleeves. I am not the first owner, but the truck only has 50k+ original miles on it. I took the bed off myself a few months ago to install a new fuel tank and the sleeves weren’t there.

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bucket said:

Mine did not have sleeves either.

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ridenby said:

Both my CUCV M1008 K30 have sleeves on front bolt between flanges of C .

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That’s what it is then, a CUCV thing. Must be part of the upfit that allowed them to claim the 1-1/4 ton capacity. I reinstalled mine with the sleeves when I bought new bed bolts, so it feels extra macho to drive around.

@Matt89olds,

When I was rebuilding my truck, I went to my local Chevy dealer to get new bed bolts for my new bed. The one's I got were zinc plated with some locking stuff on the threads. I got to looking at them and was trying to figure out just how long it would be before I saw rust. We have a fastener company here in town and I had bought stuff from them before so I went there to ask them if they had these bolts. They said "Yep" so I replaced all those zinc plated bed bolts with stainless steel...no rust! And I put some lock tight on them myself.

I'm sure somewhere in your town has to be a fastener company. Look them up in the yellow pages, internet, whatever and go there. You'll be glad you did. While you're there you might start thinking about more screws and bolts on your truck you'd like knowing are rust proof. I replaced every fastener, i.e. screws, bolts, nuts, washers that was practical on my truck with stainless steel, and I can take my head light bezel off and there is no rust.

I replaced all my exhaust system bolts and nuts, washers with stainless steel. I replaced some regular steel U-bolts off one point of my exhaust a couple of months ago and they had been on there for over 25 years and they came right off as if I had just put them on. There was a couple of U-bolts that I had to use regular ones instead of stainless because the place I had got the stainless U-bolts from were out. So I had to order stainless U-bolts to replace them with, but had used stainless nuts and washers to install them all those years ago.

@Frankenchevy,

I believe it was in either '87 or a couple of years later that GM went to their heavy duty frame for all their pickup trucks. And all that extra framing your pictures have been showing are part of it. I know that when I was rebuilding my truck in '94-'95 I had been going over to my Chevy dealer to get stuff for my truck that was genuine Chevy, when a sales guy was showing me all the beefing up that GM had done to the frame up by the engine and back there under the bed so these trucks could haul much more than my year would ever have. It was impressive. In the '95 ones the engine area of the frame was double what mine was, for bigger more powerful engines.

Raider L said:

@Frankenchevy,

I believe it was in either '87 or a couple of years later that GM went to their heavy duty frame for all their pickup trucks. And all that extra framing your pictures have been showing are part of it. I know that when I was rebuilding my truck in '94-'95 I had been going over to my Chevy dealer to get stuff for my truck that was genuine Chevy, when a sales guy was showing me all the beefing up that GM had done to the frame up by the engine and back there under the bed so these trucks could haul much more than my year would ever have. It was impressive. In the '95 ones the engine area of the frame was double what mine was, for bigger more powerful engines.

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The pictures in this thread aren’t mine, but that’s interesting what your dealer said. I would think torque is what stresses frames rather than power.

Having IFS probably changed the way frames were stressed and had a bit to do with design changes.

My short bed 73 has one sleeve on the drivers side, 2nd position! So only one long bolt? Go figure? Might be the gas tank config? Mine always had 2 tanks, but the Drivers side was added, custom tank and the install was wierd a couple of the few bolts I had to cut during the strip down.

My truck originally had dual tanks, between the defective switching valve and the corroded tank I just decided to remove the passenger side tank.

If I remove a bolt on the exterior of the truck, it goes back in place with some anti seize on the threads!! Few things are more infuriating than “environmental Loctite”.

I’ll see if fastenal carries stainless carriage bolts. Thanks!!!

Matt69olds said:

My truck originally had dual tanks, between the defective switching valve and the corroded tank I just decided to remove the passenger side tank.

If I remove a bolt on the exterior of the truck, it goes back in place with some anti seize on the threads!! Few things are more infuriating than “environmental Loctite”.

I’ll see if fastenal carries stainless carriage bolts. Thanks!!!

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I do the same. There are hints of silver smudges all over the underside of my truck.

A little antisieze goes a long way. Once it’s on your hands, be careful what you touch, get it on your face and before long you look like this guy!!