My wooden side rail body holes don't match?

[valkster]

Hey, all. Were holes added to the rear of the body where the wooden side rails attach for a reason other than the wooden rails?Some years ago my wife got a set of wooden side rails for my 'Bessie' restoration as a Christmas gift (I think from a link here back then). Only now am I at a point in my restoration where fitting them made sense and I did so this past weekend. The hole pattern in the wood blocks for mounting at the rear of the bed is about 2-1/2"-2-5/8" apart. This matches the write-up I recently found here that had many user examples (thanks for that). It also matches visually to the dealer brochures I have for the '82 model (the '83 brochure I have did not show wooden rails in the photos). The bolt pattern on my '83 Jeep body, however, is about 5-1/4" apart at the rear of the tub. The top hole in the body matches the write-up I found and fits the wood mounting block nicely but the lower hole is more than 2-1/2" lower than it should be!
I am the third owner of 'Bessie' and have had her for about 16 years or so. I didn't add the holes back there. I talk to the second owner on a regular basis and he didn't add them and said there was not rail kit on it when he got it. I also have the factory roll bar and it does not have rail kit mount holes tapped in the sides. The holes in the body look OEM in that they are neat, true, and dimensionally the same to other body references on both sides.
The '83 model didn't have bastard mount holes set at the rear did it? I either need to fabricate two new wooden rear mounts that are longer with mount holes to match my body, or drill another hole on each side of the body to match my rail kit and plug the lower existing holes to make it look decent. Any insight would be appreciated, thanks!

-Mark

 

[Spieg]

I don't think 83 had any changes to the rear mount. My guess is that a PO made some modification to the tub. Now that it's done, I'd probably make a couple of longer posts to fit your setup... no sense make more holes in the tub unless you're doing a strict restoration.

 

[jerseyjeeps]

I am not near my 83 but here is a visual on factory hole locations. It does sound like something else was going on other than side boards at some point.

 

[valkster]

Thanks, after further inspection, the rear holes in my tub are not in the correct place from left-to-right on the tub anyway (i.e., as referenced from the rear vertical seam of the body). They must have been for something else. Thanks for the insight.