97-03 Stepside f150- Best way to do molded smooth bed rails? Fiberglass bedsides..

So our first attempts was molding the street scene smooth urethane bed rails to my 2000 lightning and once we laid paint and clear they waved up an looked awful. Covered it with a tonneau for the past year, but now we're doing a redo.

We dug out and removed the street scenes, now we need alternatives? Any suggestions? Need the best method to give a smooth result and no cracking in long term.

Thanks guys.

Being as you have fiberglass bedsides i would say make a metal fillar glue it down then fiberglass over it. and work the fiberglass till it was smooth. hope this helps

Been playing with that idea. I'll mention it to my guy.

What about using the stock Plastic rails, gluing them down, sanding the tops smooth then filling and molding the seam to the bed sides? What type of bonding agent would be best for that?

its SMC not fiberglass. bond the street scene cabs with 3m 8115 panel bond. one thing i would recomend would be to take the bedsides off, and panel bond them to the bed across the top(if possible). use tpo adhesion promotor after sanding the cap and bedside with 80 grit. work time on the panel bond is 4 hours so you can get the cap perfect. if its on there enough, it will never let loose. now the seam to the bedside may be a problem. does anyone make fiberglass caps that you could bond on there?

That's how we did the SS caps before, but once they were painted they waived up and looked awful,body worked em with some skim coats of filler, painted again and still waived up. So not trying SS urethane ones again, even when there not glued down urethane caps look all wavy.

JB Weld :DOH: i think where your biggest problem is gonna be the bed and fillar seam. The urethane caps arent liking the heat. Atleast with a metal fillar it wont buckle with heat just gonna take time getting it cut and bent right. good luck

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drpitlo said:

Being as you have fiberglass bedsides i would say make a metal fillar glue it down then fiberglass over it. and work the fiberglass till it was smooth. hope this helps

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I might be wrong, but fiberglass does NOT stick to metal. Probably not a good idea....

Well if fiberglass doesn't bond to metal then people are gonna be repairing alot repairs previously done w fiberglass.

Edited: 10/16/2011 9:37:06 PM by LAYINGNUTZ

it can be done. i molded my whole bed. i first off made a fiberglass mold of my tailgate and then used it to make a fiberglass tailgate skin. i sheetmetaled the inside of my bed. i took a good roloc disk and roughed up my bed side at the top to about 8 inches down. the top part of the bed sides are indented where the bolts are. i filled those with kittyhair and sanded that down. then did 3 layers of glass that went over the top of the rail and over lapped the bedside and the sheetmetal about 8 inches. then sanded it and had a lot of bodyworkin after that. hope this helps you out.