Duplicolor Bed Liner Application

A simple bed bob project on Trevor's 85 Toyota truck turned in to a month long project.  Once the bob was finished, his attention was turned to address the poor state of the truck bed.  Rust was eating away at a good portion of the bed, and several of the seams had popped their welds and were hanging loose - not a good thing.  But with a little time, and a lot of attention, he finally had the bed in decent condition.

And what better way to finish off this bed restoration and modification project than with a do-it-yourself bed liner application.  Trevor chose to use Duplicolor bed liner material for several reasons.  First, it is cheaper than just about any of the other products on the market - only about $50 per gallon.  Also, other reports had said that this is one product that goes a long way - something anyone would appreciate considering the relatively high cost of these bed liners.

But before we get too far into the bed liner application, we took this time to remove the bed, and clean and paint the frame.  Isn't it amazing what a little paint does to make a truck look better?  We also took time while the bed was off to clean, seal and apply some of the Duplicolor product to the lower part of the cab next to the bed.  This should prevent any further attacks of the rust monster for some time.

In addition to that, we took a little time to completely coat the underside of the bed with automotive spray undercoating.  Considering the bed was already off the truck - we were going to do as much as possible to make sure we didn't have to do this again for a very long time.

The application of the liner went pretty smoothly, and as usual we followed none of the directions (men don't need directions, right?).  instead of rolling or spraying the liner in place, we used a couple of brushes.  This method actually worked quite well and allowed us to get the thickness and texture we were looking for.  Probably the biggest benefit to the Duplicolor liner is how fast it dries.  We were able to put on several coats for a nice thick liner in the matter of a few hours.  Cleanup was easy, and the finished product looks great.  Also, Duplicolor leaves a nice texture - not resembling sandpaper like some other liners.  Only time will tell, but it looks like the liner should stand up to quite a bit of abuse.

Obviously, the before and after pictures show the difference a product like this can make in the look of a truck bed...