Brittle cladding

Sygone

New member
Today I was on the freeway, driving at approximately posted limits, when I noticed something fly up past my driver's window. I got to my destination and noticed my left front fender cladding was gone. I retraced my route two times, but didn't find the missing piece.

The tabs are still attached to the fender. The cladding simply tore right off.

In December I had the left door piece break off in the air dryer of a car wash.

What can I do to help make sure the other parts of my truck stay on the truck? This is getting expensive.

I do have another fender arch that I bought as a spare, years ago. It seems to have broken in storage, though. Is there a good way to fix it? Is there a way to renforce the tabs?
 

pinellas50

New Guy
Re: Brittle cladding

I used the good plastic epoxy from 3M on all my stuff during the repaint. The tabs all get real week from flexing over the last 16 years. I reinforced all tabs with that epoxy and small pieces of plexiglass that I used as kind of a support for them. Someone gave me that idea and it worked great. That 3M stuff also works very well in fixing cladding. I had to reattach a couple of the tabs that the body shop broke off while they were painting the cladding. It's been about 21/2 years now and no cladding problems. Granted the truck has only moved about 1K miles in that time.
 
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