Pick-up Truck Bedliners

[Egon]

Rob:
My truck box also has many dings and dents. I may paint it this summer as last summer I painted the bottom of the truck and am real happy with the results.
Our camper has had a permanent home on the truck for several years now as it gets used in the winter. It sits on a sheet of plywood with some blocking on the sides so it can not move.

Egon

 

[RobS]

<font color=blue>last summer I painted the bottom of the truck and am real happy with the results.</font color=blue>

Egon, that sounds like a very messy job! Is that considered routine maintenance up there /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[Egon]

Rob:

It was not messy at all. The camper tie down bars and trailer hitch were very rusty. I also wanted to check the hitch as it had been seriously overloaded. What I did was sandblast the bars, hitch and other rusty areas but did not touch the frame or any of the factory rust coated body panels. Washed it off real well and then spray painted everthing. The hitch and tie down bars have held up well. The truck is high enough and I'm small enough I was able to crawl around underneath with no problem. Got real wet when washing it down but at 30 C that was no problem. This summer I have intentions of treating our other two vehicles the same way.

Now if Bill gets that spray paint bay set up it would really be a big help!

Egon

 

[PaulT]

I have one of those load handlers, and it DOES NOT work with the spray in liner I have. OK it works with a very small load, but put any amount of soil/gravel (when you really want the help), and the friction is too great for the load handler to overcome. The first time I learned this, I had quite a bit of shoveling to do (all while being careful not to cut the load handler sheet). I solved the problem by getting a 4x8 sheet of fiberglass paneling like you see in 7-11 bathrooms from Lowes. Whenever I go for a load, I put that sheet down first. It is much slipperier (is that a word) than even a plain truck bed, so the load handler works great, and can handle loads heavier than it was originally designed for. I have a shortbed, but its flexible enough to flex down in the bed with the tailgate up. When I open the tailgate, the sheet flattens out almost to the end of the tailgate, effectively covering the gap between the bed and the tailigate, so it really helps out. The only problems are that it cost almost $20, it has begun to crack, and its akward to store.

 

[looch]

<font color=blue>Plenty of dings, scratches and all out dents...</font color=blue>

Am I missing something here? Are you bragging about your truck bed being messed up? I don't understand. I spent a total of 200 Canadian dollars protecting my truck bed. Now I can actually bounce logs out of the bed without damaging it.
Here are few more really bizarre things that I do:

I use floor mats in my truck,
my wife puts a table cloth on the dining room table,
I use a coaster under my beer on the coffee table,
And, get ready, I actually wash and wax all of my vehicles.

Why I should avert my eyes from a truck bed because it's a truck bed is beyond my comprehension. I do what I can to keep my things in the best possible condition.

 

[RobS]

Paul, I too try to keep things in the best possible condition. At the same time though, I use all my tools (including truck and tractor) to their fullest capabilities. That use generally results in “normal wear and tear” and I would never hesitate to use a tool for fear of “normal wear and tear”. I consider truck beds to be a wear and tear item. I’ve had trucks all my life and there is something psychological about that first bed scratch. Once it’s in there, I’m all set to use the truck for it’s intended purpose. I do like the spray on bedliners though, and my next truck will likely have one.

I keep the exterior in decent shape (other than the major bed dent from a tipping Bobcat… can’t justify the $$$ to fix that right now) and the interior is clean, complete with floor mats. Spotless, no. Clean enough to spot problems, definitely. Wash and wax a couple of times a year, no time for more than that /w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

 

[Harv]

Anybody catch the news story last night about using the <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.line-x.com/>Line-X</A> truck bed spray on the walls of the Pentagon?

Turns out the stuff has such properties as to keep whatever it's coating from flying apart under impact or explosions. The news demos included dropping construction bricks from a height onto a concrete surface. The raw bricks shattered, while the coated bricks stayed together. They even detonated some explosives inside a small shed whose walls were treated with Line-X, and the structure hung together. Mind you, it doesn't keep things from getting busted up, but it prevents them from turning into shrapnel, which apparently is what killed many of the people in the Pentagon on 9/11.

The Line-X folks are thrilled, of course. Imagine having a whole new market fall in your lap out of nowhere.

 

[Lane]

Wow... hot topic! From what I'm reading sounds like the ultimate would be to use the metal bed just like it came from the factory not to worry about dings and scratches and then have a spray in liner installed just prior to selling or trading the truck as they are so popular you'll probably get your cost of the liner back and sell it faster to boot! /w3tcompact/icons/clever.gif

 

[PaulT]

Now THATS a liner strategy that makes sense to me. Its probably what the guy who owned my truck did just before he traded it in!

 

[cowboydoc]

In all truth that's about right! When they spray that liner in they rough all the paint up anyway down to metal or a dull look to get the liner to stick to it.