Bed Liner Paint - Which One To Choose?
Bed liner paint is a fast and cheap way to install a bed liner in your truck. Apply the bed liner paint with a roller, brush or paint gun. It's easy to get a bed coating that looks great. The trick to a long-lasting coating is preparation of the surface before applying the bed liner paint. Poor preparation will lead to a peeling coat.
My two sons installed a liner on our truck and it's perfect for how we use this truck. Looks great and is quite durable. We've used the liner now for over a year and it looks almost like it did right after installation.
Check out the following comparisons between three of the leading bed liner paint products.
Herculiner
The Herculiner bed liner paint is advertised as a thicker coating than the competition. My neighbor just used Herculiner bed liner paint on an old truck. The coating does appear to be thicker, the texture a bit more like a professional spray on liner than some coatings.
Herculiner offers colors other than black. You can get white, gray and red. Also this company offers a complete kit so you get all the supplies for application in one package. It's a little more expensive than the other options, but maybe a little more advanced product. Remember you'll need an extra quart for an eight foot bed ... a total of five quarts.
I recommend the Herculiner based on the looks of my neighbor's truck. You can often find this locally or it's online at this link...
Plasti-Kote
We used PlastiKote bed liner paint for our project. Like I said, the hardest part is cleaning and sanding the existing paint coat and then masking for painting. The actual application to the clean bed was fast. We used brushes up under the bed rails and then a roller on the rest of the bed. Bed liner paint has small rubber granules in it that gives it some texture. The paint sticks well and dries in about a day. We actually bought two gallons. The thicker the better. The bed on this truck is a little longer than six feet. A bed longer than six feet will need at least 5 quarts.
The looks of the bed is much improved over the original worn bed. After a year we have a few gouged out places in the coating. These can be easily retouched with spray Plasti-Kote. A few of the little rubber granules have broken out of the paint as things have been dragged along in the bed. You get a little white spot there, but no problem.
Our liner has been very satisfactory on our truck. Cheap, durable and good looking. Get details and pricing for the PlastiKote bed liner paint at this link...
Duplicolor Bed Liner Paint
I haven't tried this one yet. Very similar to Plasti-Kote. Note that Duplicolor does sell a special gun for paint gun application of their product. They also only recommend application of this product over the original factory finish. I guess you could still get good results if you do the surface prep right.
You may also want to spray on some primer before painting too. Overall this bed liner paint looks very similar to Plasti-Kote. Get details at this link...