Hey gang, asking for some help here. I've been working on the annual deep cleaning of my 2005 Crew Cab F350 this week, and the body side moldings on the truck are badly faded and falling off. I pulled one of them the rest of the way off and found lots of bubbling paint and rust underneath. Seems ford's idea of off a tape strip top and bottom with a gap down the middle works great for keeping moisture and crud in.

Anyway, I'm basically junking the factory trim, and will be grinding the rust, priming with rust converter, and painting with rustoleum. I need some molding 2" wide or bigger to go back in place of the factory trim over the repaired area. Instead of some boring black vinyl trim, I was thinking some chrome stuff would look nice. The only thing I can find so far is some billet aluminum made by putco, but they list it for an 8' box, no listing for the short box, which is what I have. I figure I could just not put the pieces for the box on... Has anyone installed the putco trim? Any pics, feedback, etc? I would love to find some stainless trim, but have come up empty handed in my searches, the only thing I've found in stainless is on ebay and it goes over the existing trim, which is no longer present on my truck. I also put a call in to Steve at Billet Badges, he's looking into making some billet aluminum trim for me possibly milling in my company web address which would be pretty cool. Any other ideas or feedback would be appreciated.

I'll post some pics tomorrow of the corrosion problems created by Ford's brilliance. This latest corrosion find doesn't surprise me given the flaking paint at the window corners and front of the doors, rust under the third brake light and on the roof, and rusty fenders this 5 year old truck has already. I wont even get into the flaking chrome on the grille, wheel center caps, grille emblem, side emblems, etc.

 

If they're badly faded, I would just repaint the stock molding and put it back on.

 

My 04' SC didn't come with body side molding from the factory. I went to a local Ford body shop and had brand new OE moldings installed for around $150. They come prepainted and ready to stick on so anyone can install them themself but my truck was in the body shop anyway so I got them installed.

Check for rust on the bottom inside lip of the tailagate, with rust in all the places you have I bet its bad there.

 

Thanks for the info, I'll check with the dealer, that's half the cost of the Putco aluminum ones.

The tailgate actually isn't bad, but it's only on the truck 6 months out of the year due to the spreader in the truck through the winter. But the rear bumper got replaced last year due to rusting through...

 

I'd check with a couple dealers for pricing and maybe the FTE parts guy Ed. Some dealers really mark the parts up. You'll need your paint code, at least when I bought mine they cam prepainted. I put mine on in 05' so the prices probably went up some.

Luckily the winters are not too bad down my way but I'm still under the truck regularly painting and keeping the rust at bay. I also drop the spare yearly and check the cable and clear the spare. Crap like to sit in the spare wheel and the cable can rust and snap. Grease the cable.

 

Thanks again for the info, I just ordered a set of 4 from the dealer, $100 my cost. They're not painted, but they're dyed all the way through. I've buffed and buffed and buffed the old ones, and I can't get them to look decent, so I just sprung for new ones. Due to the price difference, I couldn't justify the putco aluminum ones at nearly $300 for the set. Now comes the fun part, fixing the corrosion underneath them, I'll take pics as I go. When I put the new ones on, I'll be sealing up the ends to keep the moisture out.

Winters can go both ways here, we don't get all that much snow... But this truck does an average of 16 hours of plowing per event, so the last thing I feel like doing after the route is done is running it through the car wash. It gets washed, eventually, but not as often as it probably should. None-the-less, ford missed the boat on these side moldings, it would have cost them pennies per truck to seal up the ends, but instead, moisture is allowed to get under them and destroy the paint and rust.

Oh BTW, I drove a 2011 while I was at the dealer, WOW! Me want one! Gotta start saving my pennies!

 

If Ford didn't leave a way for rust to eat your truck you wouldn't be eyeballin' a 2011!

 

Nah, I usually turn over my daily driver before it hits 100k, the 05 is at 98k... It's been such a damn good truck reliability wise, I'd have a hard time trading it on a new one. Gonna run her for another year and hope for a good winter this year! I'd still take a rusty ford over a Chevy that lives in the repair shop.

 

go to berubes.com on the top left of the page click view their catalog on the top of page 39 is chrome sheets. it comes in different widths. I have used this before it is great