Who makes the best bedsides ?

[gn4u2c2]

I have a 85 long bed sierra with fuel fill on drivers side. Well while parked it was backed into by another truck destroying the original bedside, taillight base, taillight lense,fender trim side molding. I am very upset as this truck was still wearing almost mint factory paint and 100% rust free garage truck from new. I told the people I would accept nothing less than GM parts done by a GM dealer. Well after checking around it seems the bedsides are now no longer available. the other parts are. What do I do ?? make them search for a mint original gm bedside and wait . Or let them put the cheepo twain junk on that they keep telling me is just as good as original. ( I don't belive that for 1 fing min.)aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The bad thing is they are friends of a family member and want to pay out of pocket because they aleady have some tickets and don't want to risk being cancelled by there insurance. I told them today I would help try and locate a bedside but they are 100% responsible for it. I got this bad feeling I should have just called the cops and turned into insurance.........

[Blackstone]

I'd locate a clean, used OEM bedside long before I'd use the Taiwan junk. I've found that clean long beds are fairly easy to come by. If you look hard enough, you'll likely find an entire bed for less than the cost of a Taiwan bedside.

[Jim85IROC]

I agree. If the truck is that nice, hold out for a clean GM bed side. Used stuff is no problem as long as it's clean and rust free (and known to be free of any prior body work).

[6977chev]

i'm thinking of buying aftermarket sides for my 77. it is impossible to find the 73-78 style bedsides with just the hole instead of a door on the passenger side were im at in indiana. i,ve looked every were and all i could find is a few 79-87 style with the doors on driver side and most of them are rusted out as well. so i to am curios to hear any opinions on aftermarket sides. i could possible have some shipped from arizona and such, but shipping is outragous and they always beat the crap out of big items like that from all of my experiences, plus the metal seems to rust so much faster than that of repop parts.

[Jim85IROC]

My truck has one aftermarket side and one OEM. It's pretty easy to tell. The tail light actually fits properly on the OEM side. On the passenger side, the gap is uneven around the tail light, and the radius of the bend for the tail light pocket is bigger. I bought aftermarket tail lights to replace my old looking OEM tail lights and it just made things even worse. Then the gap was so bad I could stick my pinkie finger into it. If you wind up with an aftermarket bed, be prepared to either accept a lousy fit or to pay the body shop a lot of money to make it match the OEM side.

[gn4u2c2]

Yeah I told them to keep calling salvage yards and find a mint GM one and they will have to get it painted. :-(