You’re proud of how your truck looks, whether you use it for work, recreation, or just to get around. So when summer comes and you’re cruising the neighbourhood, you want to show off your grille – not the bug bodies baked onto your hood.
Read on to learn about practical products and accessories available to protect your truck and keep it looking fine in the summer time.
A tonneau cover lends your truck a clean, professional look regardless of what you’re hauling in the bed. A lockable hard shell tonneau cover provides security – you can leave your golf clubs inside if you stop to shop after a round, for example. Hard or soft, a tonneau cover is easy to remove – if you’re hankering for the trail, it’s a cinch to take it off and load your dirt bikes. Two more benefits: the tonneau cover keeps everything in your bed dry in the rain and helps increase your gas mileage since it lowers air resistance, reducing drag.
You can only keep your truck bed free of scratches and dings for so long without a truck bedliner. You might think you can do it, but gently “placing” things – like landscape bricks, builder’s tools, farm equipment, etc. – in your truck bed really isn’t feasible in the long run. Durable bedliners protect your paint and provide a skid-resistant floor to keep cargo from shifting.
Insects love the summer too, and for some reason, an awful lot of them take the highway. A moulded hood protector (sometimes called a bug deflector) can help deflect bugs, as well as small stones and road debris, from your hood and windshield. A good protector will follow the contours of your hood and provide a nice accent to the front end of your truck.
When insects do hit your hood or windshield, the heat from the engine and the sun hardens them onto your paint finish or glass, which makes them surprisingly difficult to remove – even with a hose and a lot of elbow grease. Fortunately, there’s a spray for that. Bug Removal Spray quickly dissolves bugs – as well as tree sap and bird droppings – from all glass, metal, plastic, or painted exterior vehicle surfaces. So whatever nature throws at your truck in the summer, it can easily be removed.
Wheelhouse liners protect the rear wheelhouses of your truck from rocks. If you travel a lot of gravel roads, you know the chipping and dinging gravel can cause. Wheelhouse liners also help to prevent dirt and debris from getting up around your frame, and make washing the under-body of your truck much easier. And then there’s aesthetics – wheelhouse liners, along with splashguards, give your truck a nice, “finished” look.
As you know, braking is all about friction. And the resulting friction when brake pads press against a disc rotor causes the pads to gradually wear, producing brake dust. That dust collects on your wheels and rims, and when combined with moisture, it can be corrosive, and can pit and stain the finish. Make cleaning your aluminum wheels with brake dust cleaner part of your truck washing routine. Use tire dressing, too, to protect the rubber from UV damage, and be sure to follow the manufacturer’s instructions for these products and never apply cleaning treatment or protecting finishes to the treads of your tires as they may compromise grip.
Your local dealer has parts and accessories designed for your truck. Visit to find tonneau covers, hood protectors, wheelhouse liners and other accessories such as cargo extenders, chrome wheels and tool boxes.
Your Goodwrench Service Centre has a variety of cleaning and protection products for your vehicle’s interior and exterior.
