After trying to fix the broken plastic tabs on my A-Pillar trim (and trying to chase down good used one off of donors in junkyards), I took the advice of Richard from BC on this forum and simply side-screwed them on.

I wanted to pay it forward and add a little to the collective knowledge by adding exactly how I did it.

I aligned the three side holes I drilled with the opening/gap in the backbone on the A-Pillar that receives the metal clip. If your plastic clips have broken off, then it should be obvious/easy to line up the hole in the side of the trim with the pattern left on the trim piece so as to be able to "hit" the opening/gap on the A-pillar backbone/seam.

Then I used a long (1 1/2") #10 flat head screw from Lowes (IMO, a better screw selection than HD) thru the hole in the trim piece to hit that gap/hole in the backbone to secure it. While #8 screws have a much smaller/cleaner looking head, the #8 will be too small to tap into and hold in the opening/gap in the backbone.

I carefully countersunk the hole in the side of the trim with a bigger bit to get the flat head to sit flush, painted the heads with a black nail polish and it looks great. Go slow on the countersinking because if you go thru the trim with the bigger bit you are using to countersink, then you're screwed (no pun intended).

If I ever decide to restore/sell the thing, then I'll put on properly secured trim, but for now it looks good and cuts down the wind noise a LOT.

If I ever take them off again, I'll make some pics to show exactly how to align the holes in the trim with the opening in the backbone seam.

 

Do you remove the A pillar piece and do the repairs or can it be done on the truck? My passenger side one seems to be flopping around on the lower section near the cowl and it creates a decent amount of wind noise now.

 

I removed both, broke at least one tab on each and then drilled it. If it is flopping on top, I guess I could measure where I put that hole and you could try to carefully drill it in-place, though the hole will not be tangential to the plastic.

But if the metal clip is still on the A Pillar seam with the broken-off plastic tab/tongue, access to the gap/opening in the seam will be blocked by the metal clip, making it impossible to to hit that gap/opening with the #10 screw.

Once one tab on my trim piece was was broken, I decided to go all the way and break the other two off and just go with a 3 screw fastening system. I did it on both sides and with careful countersinking, it can look pretty close to what IMO the factory should have done in the first place rather than the engineering intern designed securing system that inevitably makes the trim pieces single use/install and done.

 

@andino you pretty much have to remove the pillar trim to get it done right

 

As measured from the top of the trim piece, my three holes were at 3", 12 5/8", 22 3/8". As the gap/opening on the A-Pillar seam is at least a 1/2" wide, you can be off a little and still hit the pre-existing hole in the backbone seam pretty easily with the #10 screw.

As you can see in the pic, the top hole on the first trim piece I modified was a little too close to the edge of the plastic, but I got much better the other two holes and on the second trim piece I did.

And again, a call-out to Richard as he turned me on to this method.

 

Nice will have to give it a try on the passenger side this weekend. The driver side one is a bit tough because the ARB snorkel bracket rivets into the A pillar so I'd have to drill out the rivets if I want to remove that side. Luckily, the rivets hold that trim piece tightly.