Well.....since it is christmas I decided to give myself a christmas present and start on my bed conversion for the M818.
I'm using a 5 ton bed....but that's what I had laying around the yard.
I cut it down to 8' because I need extra room for putting a 45'000# hydraulic winch behind the cab. I'm also modifying the spare tire holder to hold a 1600-R20 and a hand crank winch boom to deploy and recover it when needed.
I got really lucky because the 5th-wheel plate fits perfectly between the C-channel sub-frame of the 5 ton bed. All I have to do on the front, is modify the end of the bed-frame, move the gussets outboard of the subframe and weld a plate with a kingpin to the bed's cross members.
I'm shooting for the surface of the bed to be the same hight as the top of the front fenders. that will give enough clearance for the 1600-R20's off road and should look decent.
This will make the bed sit about 4" higher than on a standard installation 800 series cargo truck....but oh well....
Then I will install a heavy wall piece of square tubing on the rear of the trucks frame for the rear bed support.....but more details of that part later....
I will post some pics of what I got done so far tomorrow.....
Soni