Well youโre talking to a guy who has done two of them, so I donโt think, I know.
Go look at your truck and tell me if you can cut it so you have 2 1/2 more inches of tailgate opening width on one side. Itโs literally next to impossible, and Iโm a car building guy who has turned hardtop โ50s Cadillacs into convertibles that look factory no matter where you look.
Cutting the truck instead isnโt a realistic option unless the truck is junk and you donโt care how much you hack it. Itโs not just sone sheet metal inside the box that would have to go.
If I were going to do it, Iโd pie-cut the bed floor and un-taper it, adding in a 5โ pie slice from a donor bed floor, then redrill or otherwise modify the bed mounting bolt areas. Then Iโd cut two tailgates and weld together one 5โ wider version, or just make a custom 5th-wheel style gate.
The interference area is usually the bathroom. Sometimes thereโs enough room to โclearanceโ it without disturbing anything inside.
On my current one, youโre right the shower wall was right up against the kickout area. Some careful slicing and fiberglassing gave me the two inches I needed.
The other thing you CAN do, although it will look funky, is just swap an earlier model square-body bed onto the truck. In the late 50s and early 60s some pickups came from the factory with mismatched beds, because they wanted to get on the โfleetsideโ bandwagon but didnโt have their own tooling yet.
2017 Northern Lite 10-2 EX CD SE
99 Ram 4x4 Dually Cummins
A whole lot more fuel, a whole lot more boost.
4.10 gears, Gear Vendors overdrive, exhaust brake
Built auto, triple disc, billet shafts.
Kelderman Air Ride, Helwig sway bar.
