Timber or Metal Your Preferred Option for Tray Back Ute Flooring?

[Lionelgee]

Hello All,

What is your preferred option when re-flooring a tray back Land Rover ute - hardwood boards, aluminum or steel checker plate? What are the pros and cons of each option?

One of my tray back utes must have originally came with a timber floor. This floor was then replaced by the former owner with a sheet of form ply. The tray has folded steel drop-down sides. Due to some carpet being glued to the ply the flooring has held moister and needs to be replaced.

My automatic response is to install a steel checker plate floor, due to its robustness and how oil and grease do not stain it. However, the vehicle was fitted with a timber floor originally and they look great when they are occasionally oiled and are maintained.


Kind regards
Lionel

[scarry]

What do you use the ute for,that will give us an idea what is best?

[87County]

Keep in mind cost (and weight if it is important) Lionel, what with getting ironbark h/w boards thicknessed, planed and t&g'd, they'll be a bit dearer & heavier than thin steel treadplate.

I guess you know how to cramp them firmly by wedging with short sections of t&g.

Timber can look the best but needs maintenance

Aluminium could be ok, it is just that it looks awful

regards, Laurie

[goingbush]

IMO Wood is much better than steel, alloy is the worst as its too slippery .

Jarrah flooring being the best local timber but its expensive , survives without ongoing mtce .
Tas Oak / Alpine Ash / Messmate etc does not weather well unless you frequently oil it.

I will redeck the Dodge Ute with Jarrah, its got temporary Marine Plywood at the moment, still holding up well after 30 years.

Tongue and groove is ok for a tray with a solid subframe as it does not need to flex,
but no good for a Ute floor that needs to flex , rebate the edges to fit metal strips over and fix down using the strips, don't fix through the wood.

Ive got black 'formply' on the Iveco tray floor and has been brilliant, standing up well to punishment after 7 years.

[Bigbjorn]

Hello All,

What is your preferred option when re-flooring a tray back Land Rover ute - hardwood boards, aluminum or steel checker plate? What are the pros and cons of each option?

One of my tray back utes must have originally came with a timber floor. This floor was then replaced by the former owner with a sheet of form ply. The tray has folded steel drop-down sides. Due to some carpet being glued to the ply the flooring has held moister and needs to be replaced.

My automatic response is to install a steel checker plate floor, due to its robustness and how oil and grease do not stain it. However, the vehicle was fitted with a timber floor originally and they look great when they are occasionally oiled and are maintained.


Kind regards
Lionel

The dropside bodies fitted to Series III by Pressed metal had some sort of plywood floor in one piece. They seemed to live well. Shot edged timbers in Ironbark, Red Gum, Turpentine, Spotted Gum are good but expensive. Lionel, there is still a timber industry up around Bundy , isn't there? Phone your local forestry office and they may be able to set you on the right path.

[JDNSW]

Depends on what you are using it for, and the vehicle's intended future.

Wood is the best from the user perspective except that it stains with oil and many other liquids, many loads carried such as steel, rocks etc are likely to gouge holes in it. On the other hand, it is expensive, particularly if the better timbers are used, relatively high maintenance, expands and contracts with the seasons, and most wood rot in the wet climates and warp in dry climates.

Steel is undoubtedly the strongest and most resistant to abuse, but will rust if not kept painted (galvanised is best, but is expensive) and is heavy or flimsy.

Alloy is lightest and, in my view, the best all round. While damaged by rough treatment as easily as wood, and paint rubbed off as easily as steel, it will not usually be damaged if neglected. But is probably nearly as expensive as wood. And, after all, this is what Landrover preferred!

All trays need to be properly built bearing in mind their material. Metal trays will always be noisier than wood.

Note for Brian - I have here a tray that came out of Leyland on a S3 - it is all steel!

[Lionelgee]

The dropside bodies fitted to Series III by Pressed metal had some sort of plywood floor in one piece. They seemed to live well. Shot edged timbers in Ironbark, Red Gum, Turpentine, Spotted Gum are good but expensive. Lionel, there is still a timber industry up around Bundy , isn't there? Phone your local forestry office and they may be able to set you on the right path.

Hello BigBjorn,

Thanks for the reply and for the information. There is still a timber industry around Bundaberg. I just put new hardwood floor boards into a room in my Queenslander. I bought the flooring directly off the sawmill. That is why I thought of an alternative after my initial automatic response to go with steel chequer plate. I also still remember getting long splinters under my finger nails from my Uncle's timber tray ute when I was a kid shovelling stuff out of it.

It is interesting what your wrote about the Series 3 having a plywood floor. What is fitted to my vehicle could be original? I thought it was a farmer modification. I bought the vehicle from a cane farmer. Along with a bit of fencing wire to hold the accelerator pedal return spring in-place.

Kind regards
Lionel

[Bigbjorn]

JD, I don't doubt there were bodies with a metal floor but I never saw one. The bulk of LR sales then were 109 with PMC steel dropside bodies, cab and chassis for the long pocket farmers to build their own or fit a used body. Towards the end of my Leyland experience we managed to convince PMC to make an aluminium dropside body as an option. Not many of these. Over 50% of Qld. zone sales then were dropside bodies or cab and chassis. Very few new ones were sold into the recreational market. Most Rec buyers wanted cheap used ones to fit out.

Lionel, turpentine is the best wood for outdoor exposure including being immersed in water. Might be hard to find nowadays.

[trout1105]

If you want a light, robust, hard wearing, low maintenance and durable tray go with the steel plate, If you want a tray that is pretty go for the wood.

[Lionelgee]

JD, I don't doubt there were bodies with a metal floor but I never saw one. The bulk of LR sales then were 109 with PMC steel dropside bodies, cab and chassis for the long pocket farmers to build their own or fit a used body. Towards the end of my Leyland experience we managed to convince PMC to make an aluminium dropside body as an option. Not many of these. Over 50% of Qld. zone sales then were dropside bodies or cab and chassis. Very few new ones were sold into the recreational market. Most Rec buyers wanted cheap used ones to fit out.

Lionel, turpentine is the best wood for outdoor exposure including being immersed in water. Might be hard to find nowadays.

Hello Bigjorn,

One of my Series 3s utes came with a full aluminium tray - 1974 2.25 litre diesel LWB. I found some advertising material that showed the same tray as the one on the tilly I have.

The 1993 Defender 110 - tray back ute, which I am the second owner of - has a timber floor. I bought it off a farmer in Moura. Well it is a mostly timber floor - it has tin plate patches here and there. I am not sure whether the tray on it was made locally to the farmer's own specifications?

Kind regards
Lionel

[donh54]

Got dogs? They will thank you for a wooden floor. Carting large or heavy items like steel or rocks, go with steel. If you don't mind the noise, go aluminium.

[JDNSW]

Worth pointing out that for the majority of Series production, trays were built locally by a small coach and body builder, working for the distributor, the dealer, or the new owner. Most Series 1 lwb trays were built after the original body fell to bits, in some cases built by the owner. It was only right into S3 time that Landrover actually supplied them from PMC. Cab/chassis configuration was supplied from very early in Landrover production.

[Bigbjorn]

I was at Leyland Truck & Bus in July 1973 when T&B became the LR/RR wholesale distributor and Brisbane retail dealer. We were getting 109's with PMC dropside bodies then. Also a few 88's were made as cab & chassis and with short PMC dropside bodies. Very few though. They were mostly sold to govt. or semi-govt bodies for special applications.We also provided 109 chassis and scuttle to a remanufacturer who made vehicles for underground mines out of them.

[Phideaux]

I've never had an LR ute, but I did have a Rodeo tray-back. (about 2006). Big thing with tray-backs "anything's possible".
Pros and cons of wood and steel have been discussed by others.
My experience with checker-plate is that it's even easier to fall over on than standard steel. And a sod to scrape soil from.
Advantage of wood is that it's relatively easily repairable - I did half an old truck once - disadvantages listed by others.

No-one much seems to have mentioned 'load-bearing'.
My little Rodeo had a stirrup-style (bent tube upper-frame) made by a mob in Brisbane (Archerfield somewhere, I think) which I remember as being better than the Holden or Toyota standard trays. It was 'flat', ribbed, and nicely engineered out of sight/underneath. The side-flaps were removable (I think) but I never did.
And I grew very grateful for spending the extra for a stirrup (both sides) to enable easy mount/dismount.

Frankly, if that mob is still there (Archerfield somewhere, Ipswich Road), I'd skip DUI and get one from them. Only hesitation with aluminium was (when I bolted an aluminium toolbox to it) was ensuring the steel bolts were 'insulated' with rubber and wood and epoxy to prevent corrosion.

As an aside - I learned to think of my Rodeo as 'two vehicles' - unladen with about 32 front and 24 PSI in the rear tyres and laden (a genuine 1-tonne) with 45 PSI front and 60 PSI rear. Even at 48 PSI rear, with a full tonne on board it waddled alarmingly. At 60 PSI - it was 'no problem'.

[Hoges]

From bitter experience... checker plate can have one major disadvantage in that the striations, if they have an edge, can rub against softer materials as a result of vibrations/moving back and forth....and tear them to shreds.. good idea check the 'roughness' of the striations carefully beforehand.