We bought our 2004 Chevy Silverado 2500HD new. It was only a few months after paying it off in 2010 that the rust began showing up. The first place that it became evident was on the tailgate. I had the truck in for some body work after hitting a deer in 2011, and the guy said he wouldn’t even give me a price on fixing that rust. He said that he could make it look good as new but it’d be back in two weeks. He blamed a defect in the design.
New Bumper
The first update that I attempted to make on the truck was the one that seemed straight-forward enough: replacing my rusted-out rear chrome step bumper with a new aftermarket one that I found online.
The new bumper came with the plastic step cover trim already installed, and included four brackets and a handful of nuts and bolts (though one nut short of having everything needed for installation).
Truck Updates Coming
When we bought our diesel Chevy Silverado 2500HD in 2004, it was a necessity for work. By 2012, the work I was doing no longer required a heavy-duty truck. However, it was paid for, and I’d gotten very used to having a pickup truck, so I did not want to get rid of it for something more “sensible”. Justification for keeping the truck was cemented by the purchase of our 2016 Sunset Trail 33′ bunkhouse travel trailer, which has an approximately 7000 lb. dry weight.