My next truck mods aren’t exactly mods, but add-ons – I got myself a bed liner and a tonneau cover.

For my bed liner, I opted to go with a BedRug.

People buy pick-up trucks for various reasons, some of which include off-roading and rock crawling. Realistically, my truck is mainly going to be used as a suburb crawler about 98% of the time, with the bed being used to move basic oversized household items, if not just groceries. I actually did already use my own truck to haul all my stuff to my new residence, but that’s not something that happens too often, and none of my stuff was really so rugged that it would damage the inside of my bed.

As a result, I picked a bed liner that fit my needs a bit better. Compared to a spray-in bed liner, the BedRug is a lot softer – as the name suggests, it feels almost exactly like a rug, so there’s a nearly non-existent chance that the surface would damage anything I put into it, while the rough surface of a traditional spray-in bed liner might. Compared to a drop-in bed liner, the BedRug has a lot better traction and grip, while most drop-in bed liners I’ve seen just look like heavy duty plastic on which your cargo may slip and slide around.

I installed it myself to save on installation costs, and because I did some in-depth research on YouTube and saw that installation didn’t require any specialized tools beyond isopropyl alcohol to clean the surfaces receiving adhesive. It wasn’t a very difficult process, though it was pretty tedious and time-consuming (and the fact that my garage was pretty hot didn’t really help).

In my opinion, some of the instructions in the manual in regards to where to attach the Velcro adhesive strips were suboptimal. If you end up getting this same BedRug, I would recommend using the long, straight strips all the way in the back top (near the rear window) and on the top side of the tailgate – this is a very small thing, but if you look carefully enough, you can see some of the adhesive showing between the truck and the BedRug due to the thickness of the adhesive, and it looks cleaner to have the visible areas be a long single strip instead of smaller squares.

For my tonneau cover, I opted to go with a BAKFlip G2 hard folding truck bed cover.

I definitely wanted to go with a hard-surface locking cover, as I’m pretty big on preventative safety and didn’t even want to give people the opportunity to cut through my cover and get into the bed of my truck. The price difference is usually negligible – no more than a couple hundred dollars – and I thought it was a good investment to do that instead of trying to save a little bit of money now and potentially having to go through the hassle of potentially being victimized by a thief.

From there, I narrowed down my options and picked the BAKFlip G2 because it allowed installation with no drilling, it locked via the railings and falling flat on the tailgate instead of having to worry about an extra key, and it was a quad-panel folding system that made it easy to flip back and gain full access to the entire truck bed. It also had a very flat profile that didn’t create a large, thick panel that laid on top of the bed top, and it was relatively light compared to other hard and heavy duty tonneau covers.

I personally did the installation here again for the same cost-saving purposes, and it again wasn’t very difficult, but tedious. It involved a lot of patient measuring and adjusting to make sure everything was clamped and folded down in the proper position.

After some intensive research on where I wanted to get my auto customization done, I decided to go with Dipped Auto Works. If you missed it from last week, I opted to purchase a lower trim on my new pick-up truck of choice because I felt like going with a higher trim was a waste of money – I could get everything I wanted on the truck aftermarket for a fraction of the price, and I didn’t even want a lot of the features of the highest trim model anyway.

I had a general idea of what I wanted, and the guys at Dipped Auto Works helped me finalize my plans. This was a two-day project; this photo is of the end of the first day:

I essentially got my truck looking a lot sleeker without having to add on a sport/all-terrain package or getting upgraded wheels. Overall, this is what I ended up getting done so far:

• Front chrome grille painted red quartz tintcoat (body color) around the edge and black on the inside – it now resembles the grille of the all-terrain trims. I personally think chrome only looks nice on black luxury vehicles and only as trim pieces and accents; I wasn’t a fan of the entire grille being chrome.
• Side chrome trim pieces and rear chrome bumper painted red quartz tintcoat. Again, I think the shine of the chrome fits well with all-black luxury vehicles, but it seemed a little out-of-place on a deep red mid-size pick-up truck.
• Wheels painted glossy black. I’m not a fan of sacrificing functionality for appearance, so I had no interest in actually upgrading my wheels from 17″ to something larger, as shrinking the amount of actual tire you have compromises ride quality. I also think having massive rims on a pick-up truck looks a bit silly. So, I stuck with my stock wheels, but just got them painted black.
• Brake calipers painted red quartz tintcoat. This is something that the guys recommended, and they offered me a huge discount on it because the wheels on my truck would already be off anyway for painting, so it would be a lot easier to get it done. My wheels have relatively thick spokes so it’s not as easy to see the calipers compared to a sports car, but they’re still noticeable.
• “Canyon,” “SLE,” and “V6” badges removed. Red quartz tintcoat is a premium color, so I see no reason to cover up more of it with random chrome pieces on the side and rear of the truck. I think that lack of chrome also makes the overall body of the vehicle look sleeker and cleaner.
• 20% VLT ceramic tint on all side windows, clear ceramic coating on windshield. 20% is the legal limit in Nevada on the front windows for those with a medical exemption; there’s no limit for the darkness of rear windows, but I did 20% all-around because I already had privacy glass on the rear, so it ends up being far darker than 20%. I don’t want to sacrifice visibility out my front windshield, so I got a clear coating over it just for the ultraviolet and infrared protection.

I snapped some photos after I brought it back to our garage. The first photo is a full-profile shot from the front, the second photo shows a close-up of the recolored grille (I couldn’t get a better angle because of the garage door), the third photo shows a close-up of the recolored wheels and calipers, and the fourth photo shows the truck from a rear angle.

If you’re not too familiar with what the stock 2018 GMC Canyon SLE looks like, I have a dealership-provided photo in one of my previous blog posts, “I bought a truck.”

The modified tail lights is something that I did myself earlier – I bought a pair of Razer Auto glossy black tail light covers and applied them myself using the included adhesive.