Hey folks. I am finally getting around to having some rust repaired in my rear rockers. While I am at it I want to remove all the trim myself so it doesn’t get busted. Plus I want to inspect the rockers for rust as well. So far I only see a few spots on the back quarters. I just want to be sure. I searched and didn’t see anyone explaineing how they come off. I googled and found one hit and it looks like after you remove the front and rear wheel well pieces and remove the push rivets under the rocker trim they just pull outward and off. But I pulled and it didn’t come off. I’m not comfortable pulling any harder.

Anyone do this before?

 

I just replaced mine with factory painted ones. There are some push rivets towards the back underneath but then it has a dozen tree clips which are NOT reusable.... I used a bit of plastic to protect the paint above, then a rather thin metal pry tool against the piece of plastic I used to protect the paint as leverage and popped each one. Every single one of the clips shattered. The new rockers I put on did not have any with them either. I found some generic ones that worked but the factory ones would be better. There is not other way to remove them. It took quite a bit of force and you want to do it just as I said. If you just pull you will break the plastic on the inside that the tree fasteners attach to. If you do break one, I just happen to have an excellent condition full set of the original flares and rockers. Shipping costs would be quite high due to the length of the rockers though.

I'll see if I can find the GM part number for the two dozen new fasteners you will need.

 

And.... lucky you. Since I just did this, I took a couple of pics. Also shown is what the original tree fasteners look like. Now you can see the approximate spacing with this view of the backside of the rockers along with the approximate angle the fasteners face.

 

Finally a pic of what it looks like with them off and a pic of the painted rockers with the painted wider special wheel flares (actual GM product). There is still a couple of sets of those flares on eBay too if anyone is interested. I did not get mine on there though. I lucked out and found someone about an hour and half from me with a set including the painted rockers which also just happened to be painted in my color.

 

Thanks mixman, once again you are a lot of help! I’ll look at this during the week and see what I can do


appreciate it!

 

Does this look right?

 

The correct part number for those clips are GM 10297370

 

Perfect! Thank you now I just need to figure out how to get them off without damaging the trim.

 

Mixman, it appears from your picture that you can at least save half of them by popping just the front half, or the back half of the tree clips and then nudging either forward or backward depending on which half you pried off; correct? By the way, your color matched trim panels were a solid investment. They look great!

 

When I took them off I used a panel trim tool like the middle on here...

Like I said though - find a small bit of scrap plastic or something to put against the actual metal rocker just above the plastic rocker panel cover to lever against so you are not levering the metal tool directly against the paint.

@clsimmon - I actually tried that. It would not budge for me. The retainers do fit pretty tight in the little notches for them on the rocker covers. I also did not want to push them too hard to the side as I was worried I might break one or more of the mounts for the retainers off the back of the rocker cover. The way they stick out, there is just not much actually attaching them to the rocker covers.