The 2015 and up F-150's all have imperfections in the aluminum from the factory. My son in law's 16 shows it on an angle and when I look at new trucks on the lot, they also have wavy or unevenness off the sheet metal on the bed, and doors. Its particularly noticeable on the upper area of the bed and door where aluminum changes angle slightly and tapers inward. It drives me crazy when a new truck drives by and the sheet metal isn't perfect. What I've found is that 90% of people just don't care about that kind of quality issue. They care more about tolerances between door / door frame, hood and fenders, tailgate and bed walls. To me, a $64,000 dollar pickup should be be flawless but then maybe that isn't possible with aluminum??

 

I have the same issue with my steel panels. It's not something that started when they went to aluminium

 

I have a 2013 and the panels are nearly flawless except the doors. Its definitely worse on the Aluminum. One of the sales reps at my dealer said aluminum expands and contracts more. Im a professional pilot, our aircraft do expand and contract quite a bit but the temp changes are extreme. I think it may just be "good enough" for Ford as long as the majority of people don't complain. I know the sales reps are aware of it but sales are pretty darn good . My son n law would never notice the imperfections and I'm not about to point them out to him because he is very happy with the truck. I wish I didn't care, but it is something that really bothers me. I worked in a paint n body shop through high school and spent thousands of hours sanding and filling slight imperfections before paint. I'd been fired if I had allowed a vehicle to go to paint with the kind of waving in and out the current f-150 has. I have not looked at the super duties yet to see if its tooling specific.

 

Yeah, I agree. Ford is making them to a standard. Having said that though, I have seen a couple of new Raptors that have amazingly flat door panels.

My '14 has wavy panels, just like my '10 and my '06 F350 too. My 2000 F150 was actually pretty nice. It seems to be the luck of the draw.

I detail on the side and look closely at paint on pretty much every vehicle I have the chance to. It seems that Ford purposely picks the nice ones to paint red and black.

 

That waviness is just an inherent trait of Aluminum. It's caused by the stress of forming. To get them perfectly flat takes a few presses so that the aluminum relaxes, wrinkles, then press it again to flatten. It's the stretching and and relaxing that causes it. Steel does it too, just not to the same extent. It also depends on the grade of hardness, the lubrication used, and the age of the tooling. On the B-17E project we have flat sheets of aluminum that have built in waves! The thinner the sheet, the more apparent they are. The thick panels of .050 and up though are pretty flat.

You should see what happens when you start to rivet thin sheets to the stringers and formers! Get the holes off just a tiny bit and man can it wrinkle!

 

Oh wow I think I have the same problem but mine isn't leaking

 

Panels on my truck are not wavy at all. The gaps on the rear doors on the other hand are flat out awful.

 

Same here. Rear drivers side sticks out starting 8" from the top. Makes it look like the door isn't closed. I have also found a few dents, that are hard to spot unless the light hits it just right. If they were in a steel panel, they would either not dent, or dent, no in between like on Aluminum.

 

The problem that I keep seeing with these is that the hinge pin is what breaks... in the middle. You can't buy the hinge pin alone.

I keep seeing these posts about the spring breaking or the end of the hinge-pin breaking but none about the pin breaking in half. I've seen a dozen or so break like this. Including mine. My replacement Ford part broke the same way after six months.

 

I know, i know its an old thread.
Could the roof cracks be caused or accelerated by an improperly installed moon roof causing abnormal flexing and fatiguing of the roof aluminum?

Could also be the roofs were improperly welded or riveted causing excessive stress to the roof aluminum.
Aggravated by environmental expansion and contraction causing the aluminum to finally buckle and split.

Would be curious to know if these roof cracks appear on non moon roof trucks.