Stepside bed angle trim - remove or not?
 

Wondering what the stepside folks do with the piece of stock bed angle trim when painting a truck; leave it or remove it and replace it? Mine looks like it is trapping rust behind it (see pic below) and seems like it should be removed, but I dread drilling out all the spot welds. It looks like LMC sells stainless replacement pieces, so probably will replace it with a nice new shiny piece, but wanted to see what other folks were doing first.

Also, do people usually paint over the bolts holding on the side fenders or install nice stainless hardware?

Thanks.

Re: Stepside bed angle trim - remove or not?
 

It's a safe bet to say there will be rust behind the strip..need to remove it and remove the rust and get down to bare clean metal and get some epoxy on it..I've seen fender bolts painted and not..I pulled my fenders when I painted and replaced my bolts with stainless..

Re: Stepside bed angle trim - remove or not?
 

I went with new bedsides and the steel angles are spotted on them. In your case, I would remove them and replace with the pretty ones as you probably have rust hiding there. My angles did not come pre-drilled for the bed wood holes. At this point, I am not going to drill them or put those bolts back in.

For the fenders to bedside bolts there aren't a lot of options. You can order polished phillips head bolts like the stock bolts or you can order a kit from Brothers that uses the allen head and washer. I went with the Brothers kit.

Re: Stepside bed angle trim - remove or not?
 

Thanks guys. I got them off and there was indeed some rust which I will hit with epoxy primer. However, not quite sure what is the best way to replace them. I could buy new steel ones and plug weld them on but it seems like that is a recipe for more rust in the future. I see you can buy nice stainless ones, but how to adhere them to the bed side without welding? Aren't they structural?

I read a thread here where someone drilled out the stainless strips and used 1/4" bolts to fix them to the bed side, but I am not sure if I have enough clearance between tire sidewall and inner fender well. Also, i'd be limited to bolting only in the fender area (for appearance) which leaves a length of the angle strip ends unsupported...which might be just fine. Seems hard to get away from welding. Is there something I am not considering?

Thanks!

Re: Stepside bed angle trim - remove or not?
 

I don’t know that much about the stepside but my thought would be panel adhesive

Re: Stepside bed angle trim - remove or not?
 

I would love to use an adhesive, but I think these angle pieces support a lot of the weight of the bed and not sure I would trust adhesive only.

Can anyone out there confirm?

Thanks!

Re: Stepside bed angle trim - remove or not?
 

I used plain old steel angle strips , I welded the spot weld holes up and used flat head carriage bolts to bolt back on 3 per side.I wasn't worried about period correct and a furniture shine on bed floor.