Bed Deck Bolt Spacers

[Ronno6]

The OEM deck had steel spacers thru the wood deck at the mounting bolts.
The holes I bored in my white oak bed boards are off location a tad, enough to prevent me from installing those spacers.
I believe that those spacers insure a good solid fastening of the bed cross braces to the chassis, without clamping
down on the deck boards.
Can I live without those spacers, or do I need to cut thru the sidewall in order to allow for the lack of clearence at the point of
interference with the bolt??
That would still allow a solid metal to metal fastening.
But, are they necessary?

 

[MarineOne]

You should be just fine. Those spacers are there mostly to not allow compression with heavy loads

 

[bucket]

Mine has homemade wood planks and there's no spacers in use. It has held up great over the years without them.