aftermarket body parts

[65stepside]

wandering which aftermarket parts are worth buying and which to stay
clear of ? i hear stories of most of these parts not fitting or to thin to weld ? or who sales the best fitting parts ? mainly asking about
fenders,cab corners ,cab floor sections,door skins ect.
any info would be helpful before i try to get some of these parts,thanks to those who can help !!

[Scooter3]

This question has been raised alot. There are alot of new people on here since this has been discussed so Ill lay out the nitty gritty on the sheet metal parts, mainly patch panels.
AVOID:
Floor Pans
Outer Door Skins
Cab Corners
Kick Panels
Why avoid these?, you ask, well Ill tell you.

The outer dimension and the placement of the cab mount bolt hole on the floor pans is the only thing that IS correct. All of the rolled seams or w/e are not right. These pans are actually for a 67-72 and are sold to us as a 60-66, no joke.

The outer door skin is basically a flat piece of sheet metal with no shape to it what so ever. The bottom skins that fix the bottom of your doors seems to work out alright with alittle work.

The Cab Corners do not have enough of the the roll at the bottom. They also do not match the contour of the curve of the cab.

The Kick Panels on an original truck had a channel in them for the water drain. When you get the patch panels, they wont have the channel made into them. This makes them very hard to install, trust me.

The stuff that worked out ok for me:
Cab supports
Rockers

The cab supports seemed to work fine, but they dont have to be perfect to work effectively.

The rockers will work but heres a fun fact. They are bigger then stock rockers by eh 1/32 -1/64 in. This is because when the repo guys made their dies, they used the dimension from a truck's rocker. So when they went and stamped them out the product was bigger.

As far as sheet metal and the vendors go. All of the patch panels and sheet metal parts come from the same place in Tiawain. So the parts you get from LMC come from the same place as Harmons, Brothers, Chevy Duty, and all those others.

[456chevytrucks]

I understand there are three wholesale sources for patch panels for the '60-'66 Chevy trucks, sold by the aftermarket truck parts suppliers. I believe tabco.com is one of them, but I don't recall the other two.

In any case, I have personally purchased patch panels from LMC Truck (Lenexa, KS) www.lmctruck.com, Classic Parts of America (Riverside, MO) www,classicparts.com and Jim Carter (Independence, MO) www.oldchevytrucks.com and they are not all the same or from the same supplier...some better than others.

I have also purchased from www.gspp.com (Golden State Pickup Parts) and www.truckandcarshop.com. I think they have better patch panels than the suppliers listed above. I have also seen the correct kick panel patch panels, with the correct channel in them.

I have found the full rockers have been pretty good in quality, fit and finish from every supplier I have used. Good luck with your project and keep us posted with your personal experience.

[Scooter3]

Well, the parts I got were from LMC, Harmons, and some other small place. All of them had the same factory sticker on the bottom. And when I called to the Harmon's guy to complain about the quality of the parts, he said it didnt matter what retailer I got them from they all came from the same place and there is nothing they themselves can do about it.

Trust me, I basically rebuilt the entire bottom of my cab, the majority of the parts have something wrong with them, some worse then others. Some you really have no choice to use like the rockers.

But really no matter what any of us says, buy the part you think you need before you cut the hole in your truck. If it doesn't look right to you, send it back.

[456chevytrucks]

I have been driving, collecting and restoring 4-5-6 Chevy trucks since 1981 and my experience has been all patch panels are not created equal and some are better than others.