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Okay, well my buddy that I helped build a flat bed onto his 1997 Tacoma figured out that it was hard to haul stuff with a super short bed and only one bar above the cab. That, and there was no room for the spare tire. So, last saturday we "modified" the flat bed and added a cage over it so that he has a nice flat platform to put stuff on top of the truck (a future loop above the cab will keep stuff from hitting the top of the cab, but that's for later when we have a bumper or whatever to tie in the cage to up front.)
This is the original flat bed design:
Before painting:
The cage After painting:
Spare Tire mechanism (formerly under the stock bed.) Sorry about the bad pic, but it's just a stock spare tire mechanism from a '97 taco)
As seen from the top. (You can mount the mechanism on top of the triangle and suck the tire down to the top of the cage if you so desired.) The triangle part is welded to the middle of the tubes so the bolt heads won't scratch anything you might tie down to the top of the cage like plywood or ??)
Bottom view:
Please ignore the crappy looking air compressor, he bought it for the tank at a salvage yard.
Side View:
The stock lowering/spinner bar works just fine for raising and lowering the tire. You just run it over the back bar and down into the mechanism and spin away to raise or lower the tire.
This is the original flat bed design:

Before painting:

The cage After painting:

Spare Tire mechanism (formerly under the stock bed.) Sorry about the bad pic, but it's just a stock spare tire mechanism from a '97 taco)

As seen from the top. (You can mount the mechanism on top of the triangle and suck the tire down to the top of the cage if you so desired.) The triangle part is welded to the middle of the tubes so the bolt heads won't scratch anything you might tie down to the top of the cage like plywood or ??)

Bottom view:

Please ignore the crappy looking air compressor, he bought it for the tank at a salvage yard.
Side View:

The stock lowering/spinner bar works just fine for raising and lowering the tire. You just run it over the back bar and down into the mechanism and spin away to raise or lower the tire.