Roll on Bed Liners - 5 Tips For Success By Alan Bullington At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

We, my two sons and I, just recently installed a roll on bed liner and have now lived with it for a few months. A do it yourself bed liner can make your truck look much better. Plus the new coating is a functional protection for your truck bed too. This type of bed liner is especially useful in an older truck with some bed damage, one of those beat-up eyesore kind of trucks! A roll on bed liner you apply yourself actually looks almost just like a spray on liner.

Here are some tips to make your project a success.

1. You need more than a gallon.

A gallon of bed liner paint probably isn't enough. A professional spray on liner is up to 1/4 inch thick. That's one of the keys to durability: thickness. A professional liner may contain four or more gallons of coating. One reason you can save money by doing it yourself is you aren't using as much material. So don't skimp on the material. Apply as directed on the can. You'll need at least a gallon and a quart and you may want two gallons. It's better to apply it a little thicker than to skimp and not apply enough. Thicker is better.

2. Repair the rusty spots.

Don't even think of just painting over rust. Chip it away. Sand it. Use a chemical rust converter. Look for chemical rust converters in your auto parts store. Make sure you deal with the rust. Just covering the rust with paint is easy, but will not give you the results you want. Good surface preparation is simple. But it does take some time. That preparation is a must for a good sticking top coat.

3. Clean the surfaces to be coated.

Paint will not stick to wax. If you start sanding without proper cleaning, you will drive the wax and grease into the surface. You must use the proper solvents to remove the wax before you start sanding. Otherwise the paint will peel. The solvent you need will be either acetone or a commercial wax remover in the wax section of the auto parts store.

4. Sand aggressively.

For paint to stick, you need a roughed up surface. So don't spare the effort to sand the bed very thoroughly with coarse grit sanding material. Roughing up the surface is a key to getting the coating to stick properly. You'll be glad you did. Wash the bed thoroughly before painting.

5. Prime then paint.

Use a primer on bare spots at least and prime as well as you can. Preparation of the surface to be painted really is the key to a great painting project. After all this preparation, you will be amazed at how easy applying the bed paint is and also amazed at how good that first coat looks. The main problem is your newly coated bed will make the rest of your truck look bad!

Allow the coating a few days to cure and you're ready to enjoy a much improved bed on your truck.

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