Truck tool box modificaiton

Metal Shop
#1

I’m looking for opinions and suggestions.

I have a pickup to which I want to add side toolboxes. It’s a long wide bed that I want to preserve the ability to load and carry 4X8 sheets flat. I want to use side tool boxes so I don’t intrude on the depth with a crossover style box.

The problem is that all of the side mount boxes I find extend over the wheel wells and narrow the load area too much.

I have some used boxes I’d planned to recondition that I can cut up. I’m thinking about cutting a section out like this (end view of box below) flipping and re-welding the cutout back to the box. I’ll have some sidewall ‘flags’ to remove. The boxes are about five feet deep and the ‘too wide’ part is 8 or 9 inches. I need them to be 2 or 3 inches narrower.

TruckBox
TruckBox779×294 25.7 KB

I’m an absolute newbie welder, but I have at least one box I can sacrifice to practice. Any suggestions, comments, considerations that I need to consider?

Oz (in DFW)

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Seeking order of operations and other opinions
#2

I have a similar configuration and have considered side boxes for the same reasons. Curious to see how this works out. My only ‘advise’ is academic: tack, move to opposite side, tack, repeat. Be slow about it to help avoid warping.
Plz post pics!

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#3

Are they aluminum or steel, Steel welding is easier to learn than Aluminum. Mig is much easier than Tig. When steel gets too hot it glows before it melts and falls away, With aluminum you don’t get much indication that it is near the melting point and all of a sudden a big hole appears in the part.

Once you get a better feel for travel speed then its not that big of a deal

If it’s aluminum and you want to Tig it, get good at Tig on steel first.
We do have a push/pull gun for the multimatic that can be used with aluminum, when we tried it last fall the results were not that great, not sure if it was the wire we were using not matched to the alloy we were welding or we didn’t have a setting right. We need to play with this more.

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#4

If steel, make sure not galvanized.

#5

All painted steel, not even powder coat, so should yield to a wire brush.

Thanks.