McNeil fiberglass build

Disclaimer: I know the majority of those installing fiberglass aren't looking for showroom quality fitment, and are mainly looking for tire clearance and fitment with long travel kits.

With that out of the way, I'm in the process of fitting some McNeil +3 fenders and bedsides to my truck. The initial removal of the tailgate, And bumper went pretty smooth. The bedsides came off pretty easily after we removed the main bed bolts and slid it back a few inches to access the front bolts.


The right bedside still had most of the witness marks for where the factory holes went so we started with that.

Everything seemed decent, aside from the bedrails which aren't all that flat. I'm betting they were both pulled from the mold too early.

They might look abit straighter due to the angle of this picture.

The main issue we're running into now is the upper rear section of the glass, and the clearence with the tailgate and tail lights. It seems as though the mold was designed to fit over the rear bedside structure.

But, this creates issues with tailgate clearence, and won't allow for a proper panel gap. So we tried something..

We cut a slot that would allow the fiberglass panel to sit in the same area the metal body panel would. This was great because it solved the tailgate issue, and the fiberglsss overrall seemed to be under less stress. Unfortunately this created an issue with the taillights having a gap large enough to fly a 747 through.

I think our next process is going to be to build up the back of where the glass bulges out to fit over the back, and then shave down the front flat. That might get us back in line with the tail light gap.


And we havent even gotten to the front fenders yet.

 

Welcome to the world of aftermarket fiberglass panels. Every one I have ever worked with required rework, from a GT40 replica to my Chevy widebody. I was pretty good with fiberglass sheets, resin and the old standby, Duraglas. Good luck. The journey is almost as good as the destination unless your expectations are too high. Realistic expectations are key.

 

Looks like your gonna have your work cut out for you!! (No pun intended) but seriously, kudos to you for taking the risk in doing it yourself!!

 

Started off the day with repair to some shipping damage, and to build up the upper rear portion to shave down the interior side.



We’ve got a few donor pieces from a left hand Bedside to include the front section where it attaches to the composite bed, the internal structure for the fuel panel, and the entire upper and rear inner structure. We’d love to be able to bolt that onto the truck and bond it to the McNeil panel as thing would give us tremendous strength for the bedrails.

We’d love to get our hands on a right bedside to sacrifice it for this inner structure. If anyone has a spare right hand side laying around in Florida, let me know.

 

Little bit of progress today. After the backfilling and repairs in the last post we sanded them down and re-fitted them. Looking alot closer to the finished product now.

 

Looking forward to see the finish product. Great work so far.

BTW, I noticed you installed the Baja kit. How long did it takes you?

 

Good to see you're documenting all of this as I didn't care to when I jumped into the fiberglass work around 18+ months ago or so. Tips and tricks would have been a good to have! As for bedside support, I used a metal one inch square tube and some washers as spacers to provide a superstructure for the bed rail, it just sat on the top of the composite bed and was bolted through. Best of luck!

 

Nice write up! I ran into the same issues at the rear corners where the tail gate closes, you are not alone. In fact, most everyone I talk to has issues there. Mcneil fitment is subpar IMO and will require more fitment than you "average" fiberglass.

 

Thanks for the replies guys. Next step is going to be trying to correct the angle of the top of the bedsides. We'll be using a two five foot sections of 3x3 3/16" steel angle iron. It'll be secured under the bed rails, extend up and provide a shelf for the underside of the bedsides. This should also provide adequate rigidity and strength for any future bed rack / canopy / RTT.

Side note. Man there is alot of dead space between the outside of the bed, inner bed and fender liner... Could make for an interesting project for a storage tank...stay tuned.

 

And here we thought the rear would be the easy part haha.

 

Another weekend, another progress update.

Test fit our 3x3" angle iron and notched it out for fitment, then split a piece of 1" square down the middle. We laminated half of each into the bedsides to straighten them and provide the proper amount of spacing.






If anyone ever says you have too many vice grips, they're wrong.
The truck kinda looks good with just the bed on there.

 

Another weekend comes to an end.

The steel channels bonded well to the fiberglass. After a bit of grinding, they fit great.

The steel we cut yesterday got fitted into place. It’s sandwiched between the side of the bed and the bed rails.

With the steel sitting down in the bedside theres still a 1 7/8” gap between the too of the steel and the underside of the fiberglass. We raised the steel up so we just have a small gap that will get filled when we bond the angle iron to the panels.

After making the rails nice and straight, and by moving the fiber glass outboard of the steel structure in the back, we have proper tailgate alignment. We also shaved down the rubber bumpers because after installing the mountain hatch tailgate panel, it had become much harder to close and was held back with far too much tension. Easy enough with a flapdisk. Just don’t launch one into orbit like we did. Somehow we managed to find it though. This journey to come home is 500 miles each way so it’ll be a couple weeks before I’m able to come back and get some more work done.

 

I have a lot of vice grips and I borrowed about 20 more.

 

Never finished or what lol?