Hahaha no "military grade aluminum" ford crap going down here. Skirts, tailboard and deck are all 1/4" 5053, cabinet is 3/16", frame rails are 4" x 2" x 1/4" and crossmembers are 2.5" square 3/16" wall. Pretty common thing up here in Canada with guys running aluminum beds, they just hold up so much better to the elements, and i am doneeee with steel decks after this last 5000$+ coating job rusting after a year, by rusting i should clairify just in spots.... its not awful but my OCD sees it as massive gross rust spots. As for frame rails on trucks that'll be a none issue, for as long as i am running my welding business ill always be buying cab and chassis which are standard dimensionally as long as you stay with a 60" C/A, so this bed would be plug and play on any CC. As for material costs, just for aluminum i am at 3k right now and thats for the back half of the deck, completed id imagine it'll be close to 7ish.
Iam copying this ACE deck to a tee that they just finished for a guy, know the owner, they do pretty stellar work, But you'll pay 30k + for one. only thing i am going to line'x though is the top deck and fenders, for now anyway.
yea with the weight savings of this deck vs steel, and some of our trailering requirements changing i am borderline in 3500 DRW territory. Just unsure if the mpg increase/ride quality improvement is worth the change vs having that reserve capacity. She cruises quite nicely on the highway but were still at 2000 RPM at 110kmh. Just wondering if between the de-rated cummins and 3.73s we'd see some improvement. If i remember correctly i was seeing 16 avg with my last personal 18 limited dually. We really don't hate the ride of the 5500 its certainly tolerable. It'll change a bit when we put the aluminum deck on for sure but may be negligible. We looked into liquid spring, and keldermen...... and while super nice kits its basically 10k cdn to get into one, and we only keep trucks 2-3 years so the justification just wasn't there. That and id imagine you'd almost never get your money back out of it during re-sale.