2010 Chevrolet 1-Ton Flat Bed Conversion (Pics)

Over the past week we helped my cousin install an aluminum flat bed on his new pickup. His truck had a camera in the tailgate that would come on when you put the truck in reverse. We spliced and extended the wires and mounted the camera in the headache rack so he can see when backing into his goose neck ball. That functions perfectly.

As far as quality of the bed goes, the aluminum and welding seems fine. This bed has a steel substructure that bolts to the truck frame. The aluminum bed then bolts to the subframe. The subframe on this one was out of square and bent a bit. You are also on your own for finding a way to support the front of the subframe (because the truck frame curves back down under the cab). The goose neck is only rated to tow 20,000 (I thought that was a bit on the light side). As far as wiring is concerned there are no connectors available and Moritz does not and will not supply a wiring diagram on how the wiring on their bed is color coded. I believe that pound for pound this bed was as heavy as the original pickup bed so I don't believe there was any weight savings.

We ran into a few other electrical problems and wondered if you fellas could shed a little light on it.

1. The turn signal or four ways worked fine before, now they flash at the normal rate twice then pick up speed rapidly like a strobe light. The original pickup bed had incandescent bulbs, this has LEDS. How do we make them flash at the regular intervals?

2. This truck also had ultrasonic park assist sensors. They worked fine before and now there is a light on the dash that says service park assist. These sensors had a connector on the wiring that unplugged, and plugged back in. We didn't splice these at all. Why don't they work now? Thanks guys.

Try changing the bulbs to incandesent the reduced amperage draw is causing the circuit to think that the bulb is shot.

The flasher unit in the truck needs to be replaced with one for made LED lights. LED's don't draw as many amps as the stock bulbs did and will cause the irregular blinking pattern. When I changed the flasher unit on my '07 Chevy it was about $80. The service park assist light may go out after 10-15 key cycles as long as you didn't damage anything during the installation of the new bed. The computer may have noticed that you had the sensors unplugged.

good looking bed, it probably is as heavy as the factory bed,but compared to the same flatbed made of deminsonal steel there is significant weight savings, for the front bed suports, i have one flatbed which i measured the distance between the bed frame and the truck frame, it so happened that a 1 1/4 square tube fit exactly so it was placed from the front of the bed frame, and run along the top of the truck frame untill it started the kickup over the rear axle, its worked for 25 years, my other flatbed has a 4x5 inch piece of 1/4 steel bolted between the truck frame and the bed frame on each side, that works too, but if you use steel, you must place a piece of gasket material between steel and aluminum when you bolt it togeather, otherwise corosion will start between the dissimiler metals, you'll love the flatbed, its much more workable than the flimsy sheetmetal factory bed

That sure doesn't sound like a very good endorsement for a Moritz truck bed. I don't imagine it was cheap either. You would think it would be square and have some kind of wiring diagram for different vehicles as well as mounting kits.

I think you can wire a properly rated resistor inline with the LEDs and that will correct the flashing problem.
As far as the sensors go, I wonder if the camera is considered part of the parking assist system by the computer and when you spliced the wires it detected a fault and turned the light on. Perhaps if the code was just cleared out it would not come back.

You can get a flasher for LEDs
I picked one up at a truck parts shop.

The backup sensors operate independently of the back up camera. Make sure you have them hooked up correctly. Just a little ice on the surface of them with interfere. Also if you had a hitch in while testing them it will pick that up as well.

Rick

When I stalled a rd bale spike flat bed on my '08 GMC pickup my turn signal lights blinked "too fast" also. My friend a former GM dealer technician wired 4 of the 6 turn signal/stop lights into the separate factory "trailer wiring harness" and my blink correctly now.