There's just no two ways about it, the most beautiful insides a pickup bed can have is a perfect paintjob to match the rest of the truck. We've all seen them before, an old truck that has a flawless bed interior with a scratch-free paintjob that looks it just rolled off the showroom floor. Unfortunately though the reality is most folks have to use their customized classic as a real truck, and can't be having a heart attack every time something gets thrown in the bed. For the guys who like to do as much of their own work as possible on their pickup, Al's Liner has introduced a series of DIY kits that rival the spray-in bedliners one has to pay to have done by someone else. Beyond having more control over the end results, the beauty of doing a spray-in bedliner at home means a guy doesn't have to mess around with moving a truck that isn't to the running stage yet. For the truck owners who live out in the country we don't have to explain what having to haul their truck to the nearest shop in town that can do the work means, it sounds like a big hassle just thinking about it.
There are two types of processes when it comes to spray-in bedliners. The first is what is known as a hot process where the catalyzed ingredients are kept in two separate high temperature tanks, and then mixed at a Y-junction right before the spray-gun to complete the catalytic process. There's no arguing with the fact that the hot process works well, but because of the extreme investment required it's not very likely anyone will ever desire a unit for home use. The second type of spray-in bedliner is what is known as the cold process, interestingly it splits into two types. The first cold type consists of a single ingredient non-catalyzed component which is available to the retail consumer in either an aerosol spray or a can for use with either a roller or a brush. The second cold type is catalyzed and uses two or more components, and is applied with a special gun. Because the second cold type is catalyzed it cures into an extremely durable surface, which brings us to the captioned photos that describe how to prepare for and then apply Al's Liner.
Spraying in a bedliner into...
Spraying in a bedliner into a new truck is easy and requires a minimum amount of preparation. On the other hand, the mangy bed in our '88 C1500 is typical of what classic truck owner's with a steel floor and bedsides can expect.
The first thing to do was...
The first thing to do was to look for any existing holes that were no longer necessary.
Believe it or not, Al's Liner,...
Believe it or not, Al's Liner, with its rapid ability to build to a thick durable surface, all that was necessary to fill this hole was to cover it with a piece of duct tape after we performed the next step.
To wash the bed out we used...
To wash the bed out we used a garden hose combined with a good scrub brush and the '88 Chevy bed was on its way.
A single-edge razor blade...
A single-edge razor blade came in handy to scrape out anything we found in the bed like paint or tar that been spilled in the bed and then dried.
Because the '88 at some point...
Because the '88 at some point in its life was color-changed from its original Flame Red to Refrigerator White and wasn't properly sanded, the white topcoat easily flakes off. We used compressed-air to blow the white off in a blizzard of tiny paint flakes.