Let's face it, the days of finding a cool, cheap classic in your local rag are long gone. For some specialty vehicles, finding a wreck with a salvage title isn't even an option. If your wallet looks like ours after the monthly bills are paid, about the only thing left is jean lint and garage dust. Sometimes a few tools and lots of cleaner is the best method of managing the dollars spent on your aspirations. Unfortunately, all the cleaning in the world wasn't going to turn our longbed into a short one. We decided to put our best foot forward and attempt to convert this '69 Chevy C20 to C10 status, as cheap as we could.
Our '69 Chevy looked pretty good, but after using 2 gallons of aircraft-quality stripper, three 7-inch wire wheels, a box of 60-grit 2-1/2-inch sanding disks, and two cheap grinders, we discovered our diamond-in-the-rough was only fool's gold buried under a 1/2-inch of automotive mud. (It's truly amazing what some people can do with Bondo.) After the body filler was swept from the garage floor, and the respirators were removed, we began shortening the bed. We pulled a number of dents with an older-style slide hammer from the toolbox arsenal. If you are in possession of a longbed and want to convert it into a more-desired shortbed, take a look at our approach and see if it can meet your needs.
We carried around a tape measure for about three weeks and took measurements of every '68-'72 shortbed we found, providing the owner gave us permission. Afterwards, we decided 12 inches from the front would give us the 115-inch wheelbase of the shortbed truck. Out back, an additional 6 inches off the bed should bring us right into proportion with the short truck. After pulling the bed free of the framerails, we set it up on A-frames under the bed supports, then examined where to take the meat out of the bed sides, so it would make the least impact on the truck's body lines. | 
Next, we took out the rear portion by removing the tailgate structure, then cut the desired amount from there forward. But, it appears the dropping body line on the bedside progressively increases its rate of drop as it goes back. We wanted to reduce the risk of distorting the body line, so we opted to make the incision close to the rear wheelwell to manage our concerns over body line alignment. | 
After the initial cut, it was obvious we had a ton of clean up on the inner bed panels to provide an optimum welding surface. |