F150 Body Kits

Just Released! Platinum Body Kits for the 1997 – 2004 Ford F150 Extended Cab Stepside Shortbed.

More information on this F150 Body Kit located here:
 F150 Body Kits
“Its always been hard to find a full body kit for an F150 Stepside, and up until this point customers were only able to find one or two parts. Now they can buy a complete body kit which will no doubt make some folks happy.”

 ”This kit is made of Duraflex fiberglass. It comes with front and rear bumpers, and two side skirts. There’s not many companies offering any body kits like this for the Ford F150 Stepside.”

Can’t find or afford a carbon fiber part for your vehicle? Or, maybe no one makes a carbon fiber part for your car or truck? Then try using our new Di-Noc Dry Carbon Fiber Vinyl Flexible Wrap. Wrap your hood, mirror covers, trunk, fenders or any smooth surface that you can think of.
3M Di-Noc Dry Carbon Fiber Vinyl Film Sheets – Looks and Feels like Real Carbon Fiber Material! Easily streached to fit most contoured surfaces.

Carbon Fiber Vinyl Roll  - An affordable option to Real Carbon Fiber! Flex Wrap Dry Carbon Fiber Vinyl Film Installation This film IS NOT a cheap, carbon fiber image printed on a decal! 3M DiNoc material has a woven carbon fiber fabric look, and is a 3-D textured vinyl material. You can actually feel the texture.: Flexible Wrap Reflects Light just like real carbon fiber fabric Motorcycle Carbon Fiber Vinyl Wrap Video Flexible and durable carbon fiber vinyl - bonds to flat or curved surfaces like roofs, hoods, bumpers, fenders, mirror covers, dashboards, etc. Re-positionable carbon fiber vinyl for trouble-free install. Strong self adhesive, cross hatch design to eliminate bubbles, peel and stick application. Just trim off excess with Exacto knife. 8.5 mil, 3-4 yr outdoor / 12 yr indoor grade vinyl. Wrap your hood, bumper or any other non-porous surface & challenge your friends to tell the difference! Carbon Fiber Vinyl Sold in Sheets – - buy a Sample today!

SCP-1 Sport Trac Hood Scoop

These days most of us are fuel conscious. With the gas prices so high there are some that just can’t justify buying a big car or SUV any more, let alone getting the big V8 engine in it. But then there are lots of us that still want to look like we have a monster motor under the hood.

An easy way to accomplish this is to install a universal hood scoop to the existing hood of your car. There are no parts to remove. You will not need to get a new hood. However, once a hood scoop is installed it will appear like you changed the entire hood to accommodate this huge motor that you are hiding under your hood.

So you may have a few questions at this point, so let’s address some of them:

Will I get any better gas mileage with a hood scoop?
- No you won’t!

Will my car go any faster than it did before?
- No it won’t.

So then what will I get?
No doubt, you are sure to get some looks. You will turn a few heads, and you will make them wonder what it is that makes your car or truck so tough looking. Even the people that have the same type of vehicle that you do will wonder what motor it is that came with your car or truck.
In the end, it will surely get you attention.

Hood scoops are not expensive. Good fiberglass hood scoops generally run between $110 and $125 dollars unpainted, and a little bit higher if you want to have one prepainted and sent to you.

Installation is not hard. It’s just like installing a car spoiler. Usually hood scoops come with instructions and all necessary mounting hardware, which includes stainless steel screws, drill guides, 3M two way mounting tape, front inserts, and vinyl trim so your front inserts will not scratch your hood..

Before you purchase one, check the sizing of the scoop that you are looking at, and see if those measurements will work out on your hood. It’s better to find out if the hood scoop will fit before you purchase one rather than after, especially if you are having one prepainted.

There is no doubt that adding a hood scoop to your car, truck or SUV will help increase the resale value of your vehicle. Usually it is just by the fact that the buyer likes your vehicle better than any other that they have seen. Your car is different, and it is understandable to most that others that are looking at the same vehicle will think in this same manner.

This is what drives up the sale price. The fear alone of losing this vehicle to another buyer will make someone commit even earlier at a higher price just to they ensure that they get the vehicle that they want.

About the Author

Mike Briglia is the owner of Custom Auto Trim, a auto accessories company based out of San Diego CA. Find more information on hood scoops at http://www.customautotrim.com/

Color Keyed Body Side Molding on a Toyota Camry

The best way to protect your car or truck from dents and door dings is by installing a professional grade body side molding. You can also protect other areas of the vehicle in the same way with wheel well molding and door edge guards.

Body side moldings are usually strips of rubber or vinyl that attach horizontally to the side of your vehicle. By installing them down the center of the door this rubber strip usually protects you from another door hitting yours. Usually the moulding will stick out farther than the body of the vehicle itself, so if someone swings their door into the side of your car it will hit the body side molding first. They usually come in black, chrome and there are some colors available as well.

Body side molding installs easily. Almost all car molding attaches with 3M automotive grade attachment tape, which is the same way that the car manufacturers use to attach factory body side molding. If installed properly the molding should never come loose. There are other areas of your car that should also be protected. These areas are the wheel well area and the door edge areas.

Wheel well molding attaches in the same manner with a 3M tape. These mouldings will trim the area of the wheel well with a thin vinyl bead that will protect this exposed area. You can also use this molding to cover up an existing dent in this area. Once applied over the dent or scratch you will never know the damage was there. This trick is used at the car dealers all of the time. Sometimes it used to just dress up the vehicle with a chrome or black trim.

Door edge guards protect just that – the edge of your car door. They also protect whatever you are hitting with your door. Because of the soft vinyl edge, if you were to open your car door into another car the likelihood of you damaging either car is minimal. The door edge guards will act as a shock absorber and help prevent any damage that would otherwise happened.

For most of us, buying a new car or truck is one of the largest investments that we will ever make in our lives. We take pride in what we drive. It doesn’t matter if we drive a Hyundai or a Porsche (okay maybe it does, but follow me here for a second). We like to drive in clean, shiny, dent free cars. Spending a few dollars on molding protection now will no doubt save you potentially hundreds of dollars in the future repairing and repainting your new car or truck.

Case and point, in the Ohio Valley and the northeastern states like Pennsylvania, New York or New Jersey, one of the most popular truck accessories on the market would be the truck tonneau cover. This is truck accessory purchase is totally weather related because people in the northeast have to put up with a lot of cold, wet and snowy weather in the winter and want to try to keep their truck beds dry if they can, and keep the snow out as well. Yes, a tonneau cover looks nice, and yes it might help you save a few gallons of gas on a nice long trip, but the main reason that customers ask for the tonneau cover would be to keep out the weather.

In the southern states like Florida, Texas or Arizona they have different problems to deal with. The sun! Can you imagine having too much sun? I know its hard to do, but when thinking about what auto accessories you want to add to your car or truck it has a lot to do with it. The sun can really beat / burn things up if left outside every day.

In the southern states the most popular accessories that people add to their trucks are the stainless steel accessories including nerf bars, rocker panel moldings, billet grilles and truck bed rails. Why? Stainless steel wont burn, deteriorate, shrink, crack, fade or anything else like that. Thats one of the reasons that the southern folks like to dress up their trucks with chrome accessories.

Most of the time the influence starts at the dealer level, being maybe your local Chevy, Dodge or Ford dealerships in your area. They seem to be the guys that would initially test aftermarket accessories like these on your truck, and after they dress up and sell a lot of them in town, the potential new customers see these vehicles driving down the road and actually start calling the dealers asking for the parts they see.

Sometimes customers dont know what to ask for, for example a stainless steel nerf bar is sometimes referred to as a chrome nerf bar, a chrome tube rail, side bars or side steps, but many suppliers of aftermarket truck accessories such as those at Custom Auto Trim are well versed in synonyms in the business. They will know what you are looking for.

About the Author

Mike Briglia is the owner of Custom Auto Trim, a car accessories company based out of San Diego CA. Find more information on nerf bars at http://www.customautotrim.com/

The major players in the body kit game are: Wings West, Extreme Dimensions, Kaminari and Xenon. Ask around; see which kits your friends or competitors have used. Do you like your body kit? Are you happy with the decision they made? Is your body kit shown in movies like The Fast and the Furious? Why do you like it and why don’t you like it? Our friends are loaded with useful information in this area.

Wings West body kits and ground effects are among the best in the world. They have a great reputation and for good reason it is well deserved. They are especially well known for their great fit on your car and they use premium materials made out of urethane which is similar to what your OEM parts are made of (very flexible). Wings West has an especially great line of bumpers and bumper covers, wings and side skirts. The company is renowned for its award winning work on Ford Mustangs, Dodge Chargers and Honda Civics, though their kits are made to work with numerous other makes and models.

Kaminari produces body kits and ground effects and has a reputation for turning cars into aerodynamic replicas of current-day race cars, and uses your existing body lines to make any components that are added appear to flow with your new body lines. They make the car look like it was built with the body kit in mind the whole time. Though many of Kaminari parts are made of urethane, their fiberglass body kits are probably the best quality kits on the market. If really great fitment is important to you, Kaminari may be the way for you to go.

Extreme Dimensions is another company that turns out high quality and very efficient body kit materials. These fiberglass and Duraflex beauties are made entirely for the showoff and they will get your vehicle to grab a lot of attention. They are aggressive, sleek and they give the impression you are topping the speed limit by more than the customary ten-miles per hour.

Xenon delivers first-class urethane body kits. From accessories to full body kits, Xenon has products from fender flares to a large variety of hood refinements, especially for the Hummer H3. Xenon body kits are made of urethane materials and focus is on the overall end appearance and fitment on the vehicle.

Making the choice that is right for you is the most important thing. Doing a little homework upfront will pay off in the end, and you will be happy with your choice. You can usually find all of these body kits and many other car and truck accessories online and you can get them shipped right to your front door.

About the Author

Mike Briglia is the owner of Custom Auto Trim, a car accessories company based out of San Diego CA. Find more information on body kits at http://www.customautotrim.com/

Some wonder why such a rigid shiny tube on the side of a truck is called a nerf bar. Sometimes people refer to them side steps or chrome tubes because they cant grasp the concept of “Nerf Bar” as being a hard shiny stainless steel object. “Nerf” material, like the material used to make soft footballs, baseballs & frisbees you may have thrown around as a kid, doesn’t really relate to some hard chrome tube you would use to step on to help you step into your truck.

So here it is. The nerf bar was a tubular device that was originally intended to be fitted to the side of a racecar – often single seaters like a midget race car that competes on a race track.

“Nerf” is also a racing term that refers to a small bump (rub) between two vehicles. When one driver bumps the other car in order to pass it, they call it nerfing.  Nerf bars protect the sides of the vehicles and keeps their tires from rubbing. Without them, the fast spinning tires can come in contact with each other causing the cars to lose control, or flip. Sometimes having nerf bars on your truck is a good way to help protect your wheels and body kits, however rub a stainless steel nerf bar up against a concrete barrier and you can expect to need to replace it. I’ll have to say sometimes I wish I had the old style nerf bars, because I’d occasionally like to bump into a few people myself on the freeway, but I guess you just cant win.

TIP SHACK

How to refinish plastic tail light lenses. With minimal effort, they can look brand-new.

We had recently purchased a late model used car that had seen too many trips through a brush style car wash. A no-no for any real car enthusiast. But, for the populous, those time-saving, discount gas station car wash machines are a might bit tempting.

The whole car had taken on a patina from the swilling automated car wash brushes. We knew that we would be able to restore the paint work in short order with System One products sold by the Eastwood Company (www.eastwoodco.com) However, we wanted to concentrate at this time on the plastic taillight, headlight and decorative trim. The objective was to rejuvenate these areas to a “like-new” finish. We selected Autosol Paste for this project [we recommend the 100gm tube instead of the 1000gm can, as this stuff goes a long way].

We first set about to carefully wash the entire vehicle, eliminating dirt, grit and contamination. Turning our attention to the taillights, we applied AutoSol by hand. We applied a small amount to a clean dampened cloth, and, with only a small amount of pressure and elbow grease, we could see out taillight lenses rejuvenating before our eyes. A quick final polish with a clean rag had all but eliminated the car wash brush marks.

If you are interested in a solution that takes less sweat, try this. Apply AutoSol to the taillight lenses with a damp rag. Use a loose 40-ply 4″ buff wheel attached to a wheel arbor on your electric drill [you can get both items for less than $10]. Buff the surface at 90° angles. Be sure to occasionally check for heat build-up. Though you’ll most likely find very little, better to be aware of the potential for heat build-up than to not pay attention to the possibility at all. Within a few minutes your taillight lenses will be transformed to like-new condition.

After the taillights, we turned our attention to the plastic headlamp lenses that suffered from the same problem as the taillight lenses. The AutoSol cut through the dullness in short order. Deeper stone chips could not be removed, but, overall, our headlights were as clear as ever.

Next, we applied the same procedures to detail the car’s ornamental plastic grille lens. The results were equally wonderful!

If you have some AutoSol paste leftover, don’t worry – it has many excellent applications on metals, too. Give it a try!

To purchase Autosol, contact the Eastwood Company directly.

WEB NEWS

You don’t have to drive a green car to take advantage of this amazing deal. Actually, you don’t have to drive a car at all – a truck will work, too. I’m talking about our sweet new deals on Lambo Door Hinges. You know you’ve seen these and you know they’re hot. AUTOMEGA® has both Vertical Doors, Inc. Brand and AutoLoc™ Brand Lambo Door Conversion Kits. Vertical Door, Inc. Brand systems are made as a direct Bolt-on installation with pre-drilled hinges to fit specific vehicles. AutoLoc Brand systems are totally universal with hinges that are not pre-drilled and are not direct bolt-on installations. So no matter what you drive we’ve got an option to work for you. And with our recently reduced prices, new product line additions, AND free shipping, it’s no wonder these are flying off the shelves.

Have you started gearing up for spring yet? It’s right around the corner, you know, and we’ve got the products you need to get you out and about after a long, cold winter. Check out our racks to find the right bike rack for your vehicle – and hey, we’ve even got towing racks. So you can pull your boat out of dry dock and bring along your bikes, no hassle.

TIP SHACK

This month we’d like to address something a little different—saving money at the gas pumps.

We all know that gas is just about as expensive as it’s ever been. And yet, despite rising costs, we still have just as many places we need to go. But there are ways you can cut costs, without having to cut back on your driving. The thing we’d like to focus on is how you can get better gas mileage every time you drive. And these tips are so easy to implement that you’ll be doing them for life, even when (if) that gas prices finally go down.

The first thing you need to look at is your car or truck’s wind resistance. If you drive a pickup truck, this is likely the easiest thing you can address when it comes to saving money. This is because as you drive, air flows into a pickup’s bed and runs into the tailgate, causing a lot of resistance and making your car work harder to get from point A to point B. To reduce wind resistance, you can drive around with your tailgate down, as some people do. Or you can remove your solid metal tailgate and replace it with a tailgate net, so the air can flow through. An air gate operates under the same principle, but it’s made from metal tubing or mesh, instead of vinyl netting. Another option is to install a tonneau cover or a truck cap. Not only do these products smooth the airflow over your bed, they also can provide lots of secure storage space.

Another simple savings solution for both cars and trucks is to keep your tires properly inflated. Tires that are low on air are going to decrease your gas mileage, again by making your car work harder. Under inflated tires will also wear out more quickly and require replacement sooner.

Taking it a step further, you can improve your gas mileage by making your car’s engine more efficient. An engine that burns 90 percent of the air and fuel mixture is much more efficient than one that burns 60 percent. It therefore will make more power from the same amount of fuel–because what isn’t burned in the combustion process becomes waste and gets sent out your tailpipe. So, a more efficient engine is not only more powerful, it gets better fuel economy. One way to address this is to improve the spark to your engine, so it burns the air and fuel mixture better. You also can make a motor more efficient by reducing internal friction, so it doesn’t have to work as hard. One way to reduce friction within an engine is to run a high-quality–or synthetic–motor oil.

This is by no means all of your options for improved fuel economy, but I hope this will get you thinking of other common sense practices you can put into play to shell out a little less cash at the pumps each week.

WEB NEWS

This month we are proud to offer you a brand new product to AUTOMEGA® at a fantastic deal—Aluminium Billet Grilles, as well as on our very own brand, MegaBillet Stainless Steel Billet Grilles. These lightweight all stainless steel Billet Grilles are made of 304 grade polished stainless steel that will not tarnish. This grille will look brand new even five years down the road. Several makes and models available.

If you haven’t gotten yourself a set of Altezza tail-lights yet, now is the time. We’ve recently added in several new models and have everything in stock reduced to it’s lowest pricing yet. This won’t last forever, so get started finding what you need.

TIP SHACK

This month we got the question:

I’m interested in purchasing replacement molding, however I’ve seen some after market chrome side molding turn brown. What causes this, and what can be done to prevent it?

Thanks for your question. Body Side Molding can turn yellow for a couple of different reasons:

1. Product failure.—If the Molding product is not a high quality OEM approved product (like those that AUTOMEGA® carries), the clear protective film covering the chrome mylar can break down, causing a yellowing effect.
2. Product care.—All products that are exposed to the elements such as sun, rain, ice, and road dirt/salts need to be kept clean. If not, they can burn or deteriorate just from the weather itself.

Luckily, there are a couple things you can do to prevent this problem. Just like the paint on your car, if you never wash your car you probably do not expect to keep your car looking shiny and new. However if you wash your car every week or two it will definitely look better. Then, if you wax it a few times a year it will look even better still. This is because you are protecting the paint from all of the harsh elements outside. Molding, pinstriping, graphics and paint all fall within this same category. If you keep them clean and keep a light coat of wax on them you not only will make them all look better but you will extend the life of the products tremendously.

WEB NEWS

You’ve been asking for them and now they’re here—Direct Bolt-On Lambo Door Hinges. These come pre-drilled from the manufacturer to fit your specific vehicle. This makes getting this hot look easier than ever before. Is your vehicle not one of the almost thirty different makes and hundred models available pre-drilled? No, problem! AutoLoc’s Universal Lambo Door System fits all vehicles by allowing you to drill your own holes as needed. We even have new Shaved Door Handle Kits so you get that clean smooth look to go along with your lamborghini doors.

We know you’ve had your eye on them, and right now we’ve got all Wings West Body Kits at 20% off list price. Wings West products are made with Urethane, which is lighter than other commonly used materials, and designed to fit your vehicle perfectly. That means less hassle and cost in installation, a better look, and less time in the shop. Just select your make and model and we’ll hook you up with all the info you need to personalize your car or truck with one of these hot kits.

Looking to outfit your car with an AEROGEAR Body Kit? Now’s the time and AUTOMEGA® is definitely the place. We’ve got our entire selection of AEROGEAR down to 10% off list price. You’re not going to find them any lower, so head over to and see for yourself. And if that’s not quite what you had in mind, what about taking a peek at our Xenon Body Kits. They’re reduced right now to below Jobber pricing, so why resist?

Finally, right now we’re offering free shipping on several of our products: Wood Dash Kits, Nerf Bars (those shipped via UPS or FedEx only) and our entire line of graphics. Looking for pinstriping? A rear window flag graphic? Or maybe you’d like to create a whole new look with one of our graphic packages. Now’s the time to save on any or all of these products. No minimum order required, but this offer is only available for a limited time, so visit www.customautotrim.com to take advantage of this awesome deal.