The gages are silver face with blue back light. The one pic is with no back light and the other is full back light as night would be. With a black dash the gauges don't show up very well but in person they are a good contrast. The bed latches are shown and I hope you can see how the one end is bent at a 90 degree angle to attach to the tailgate. Now for the purists in the crowd just skip this part as I don't want any to have a heart attack. I pondered over bed wood and all of the work it takes to keep it up. Then I considered that I am doing a driver and you may have heard we have rain in Orygun so I didn't want to have to refinish the wood. So plastic deck wood is my answer. I used a table saw to cut the edges for the stainless and used even spacing except for the center board which I used for the adjustment of spacing. It is easy to hose off and requires little care. That allows for more beer time. I am going to attempt to put up pictures so you may have an idea of what I have done. The primer is going to be the color of choice. It is the hard primer and not the run of the mill stuff that acts like a sponge.
Looks great to me! Lots of good ideas that appear to be very well executed. Great job, and thanks for sharing. Damon
ss563, that looks Goood, very good looking truck and those gauges are great. The seat belt latch looks better than I thought they would, makes me wonder if I should do that to the 60 Jeeps tailgate. Thanks for posting the photos.
Good pictures and ideas! I'm dinking with my gauges right now... I just *love* getting up under a dash~ Thanks for sharing! The best part is, YOUR DRIVING IT! DAILY!!!
I would love to hear an on-going report of how it goes with the plastic wood deck bed. On the surface(not trying to be funny), it would seem that it would be a given, beautiful, simple and logical way to go...but...I have a neighbor who really bragged alot about a fence she was putting up a couple of years ago...blah, blah, blah...super UVA ratings, lifetime, forever, never needs anything...blah, blah, and blah...well, here in the hot SW it got "Beat Up" by the sun and it is way past ready to be replaced. But, that is not the only thing...bumpers, pipes, tubing, special treated tarps, plastic anything here seems to just disappear, crumble, fall apart, fade away, become like dust...and lt does not matter all that much if it is UVVVVVVAAAA rated at the ultimate...Our dry, hot, high elevation weather/sun might not be good for that situation...or it might be. I just do not know. Just have had to replace lots of plastic things in the outdoors that I thought should not have slowly disappeared. Now, I can see that other parts of the country it would be way different...lower elevation, much more filtering of the sun, etc. Has anybody else had long term success with this? Of course, special treated wood that is supposed to stand up to all of this seems to fall apart pretty fast too. Kind of pissed because I just tried to pick up some jerks trash that was plastic and it too fell all apart...so what are you going to do? Neat, idea though...has anyone done some testing. ss563...It sure looks sharp at this point...A question about the seatbelt latches...Did your bolt catch the edge of the pocket brace or was it inside???Either way would probably look nice and clean. Rod
I have the same plastic on two of my decks and they have been in the weather for over two years. No sign of any problems yet. The largest deck is 8x60 and faces South so it gets the sun most of the day. The bolts for the tailgate come out at the forward edge of the stake pocket and I put acorn nuts on the bolts. The nuts are primed and blend in nicely.
