esee135

Just picked up my Putco Boss Bed Rails (49815) today, super nice castings, super nice stainless tubes. Too bad the hardware sucks a$$. The instructions said torque down the Allen head bolts to 65 ft-lbs in the stake pockets using a torque wrench, what a joke that was. I set my torque wrench to 25 ft-lbs, and stripped the threads right out of the threaded plate on one, and stripped the allen heads on the rest of the bolts. What a piece of $$$hit.

Conveniently one set of bars is permanantly installed on the drivers side, and half of the other bar is permanently installed on the passengers side with the other half hanging. I can't even return this crap because I can't get this junk off my truck now. I just spent the last 4 hours uninstalling the bars to exchange them and ended up drilling out one of the allen bolts and leaving the driver side installed.

I'm going to have to make a call to Putco and give them what for...I'll update this posting after I make the call when, conveniently, I had troubles outside of the customer service times...go figure, the quality of a $500 accessory.

oshnryder

Just a suggestion if something happens and you cannot find the bed rails you want. You could have your truck rhinolined to the lip of the bed and have the rhinoliner colored the same as your truck. I have seen this on a few trucks and it looks pretty good and is functional. Another thing about rhinolining is that you can easily repair any scuffs in it. Heck, people are even starting to rhinoline their roofs on their homes now.

esee135

Thanks, I've seen a guy in my city rhino-line his entire volvo, he looked like the kind of guy who got sick of rust.

I called Putco this morning, they said the 65 ft-lbs instructions were old and all you have to do is snug them up till they're tight. So they are going to UPS some new hardware to me, it's a nice gesture on their part, but I think I'm going to Monster Garage some new Grade 8 hardware to do it right.

oshnryder

Well at least they offered to replace and fixed an error in the manual. You could ask them what grade steel the bolts are in you want to find out how strong they are. Use grade 5 instead of grade 8 bolts. Grade 8 may be too hard for that application. Go here to read alittle more about that.
http://www.boltdepot.com/fastener-in...Materials.aspx
We use alot of stainless in our applications offshore but again stainless depending on the grade is softer than most steel bolts. I think the charts on this site will help you.

muttman05

Putco has always had pretty poor instructions as well as HIGH $$ products that never hold up to what they say. Just my 2 cents.

esee135

Went down to the local machine shop supply store and picked up replacement socket head cap screws so they call them. I upgraded from 5/16" with a 1/4" socket allen head with course threads to a 3/8" with a 5/16" socket allen head with fine threads, drilled out the old plates and bolts, tapped new 3/8" - fine threads, reinstalled, and it's done. I'm curious to see if Putco sends me the same hardware as supplied or if they upgraded the hardware.