Step Side Bed Experts

[67C10Step]

I spent a bit of time this weekend working on small stuff. Welding up some cracks in the steps and pulling stuff off the rear section in prep to clean it all up for paint.

I was working on my bed cross sills and made a discovery. Someone has trimmed all the cross sills to 49-1/2” length just like the reinforcement strip. LMC says the sills should be 49-7/8” in length.

Should I try to reuse them or replace? They are in ok but not great shape. My long term plan for my truck is to have a nice driver not a show truck but I don’t want to be fighting something down the road when I try to put it all back together.
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['68OrangeSunshine]

If you're gonna keep it and use it like a truck, then use the new strips. They already cut the OEM ones too short. If you just wanna flip it, just paste it back together with what you've got, and tell the buyer, you used the oem pieces.

[67C10Step]

'68,
Thanks for the response and that is definitely the way I am leaning. Given the sills really provide the bed support I really don't want to be wondering if they will work correctly. What's another couple hundred bucks right?

Also, this was some PO not me. Guess it was to facilitate the tongue and groove wood that I removed a few weeks back.

['68OrangeSunshine]

Originally Posted by 67C10Step

'68,
Thanks for the response and that is definitely the way I am leaning. Given the sills really provide the bed support I really don't want to be wondering if they will work correctly. What's another couple hundred bucks right?

Also, this was some PO not me. Guess it was to facilitate the tongue and groove wood that I removed a few weeks back.

My bad. I did not read your 1st post closely enough. It's been edited.
For a long time, I would buy a new sheet of marine grade plywood every few years, hit it with spar varnish and abuse it with doing all the rough stuff a truck is needed for. Last year, I got hold of a bunch of vinyl faux-oak planks from the tail end of a home show, and faux-planked my back deck.
Looks great, but if I dragged a transmission core across it, there would be long white grooves. But ''Free'' is an economy all its own.