Trivia question on flaps. ONE of the dealers here, install their flaps without drilling any holes into the truck. They use plates that sort of squeeze the flap onto that lip. The back plate attaches to a couple strategic points. Their claim is without drilling holes in the body, they are not hurting the aluminum (what ever that means). Nice flaps, but come with a huge price tag $500+.
Their claim is hard to believe since every other dealer has their flaps installed using screws like most of us have done since trucks were invented.
Are you all using the regular screws into the lip?

 

I beleieve their thought process is because steel screws damage the aluminum over time based on what I have been reading. There are special screws (zinc coated maybe?) that need to be used if drilling into an aluminum bed to avoid this from happening. There are several threads on this forum about this.

 

Not quite. Steel and aluminum cannot be fastened together. When they are, they begin to oxidize and rust very quickly. The OEM Ford kits come with strips of material to put in between the steel and aluminum to prevent the corrosion from happening. Just have to make sure to use it.