ncoffey

I just finished putting a 'spray in' bedliner in my new to me truck. I got a '02 taco ext. cab v6 manual a few weeks ago and as the bed had a lot of scratches in the paint (and a few bits of rust) I figured it'd be good to clean off the rust and put a bedliner in.

To start with I sanded all the rust away and sprayed some primer on the bare metal. (Just some cheapo primer from canadian tire) There were some areas where the paint was in good condition too however, so in those areas I just used some fine sandpaper just to get the shine off and give the liner something to stick to. After this I cleaned out the bed as best as possible using some dry rags. Note that between prepping the bed and applying the liner i waited about a week for suitable weather conditions. It's not supposed to be too warm or humid (a real problem here in St. John's, Newfoundland) so I had to settle for about 50% humidity. The instructions say more about proper conditions and how long you'll have to apply the liner if it is much hotter out.

The box that hippo liner comes in has a roller (for that spray on like texture), a paint brush, two cheap latex gloves, instructions, and two containers. You must also have something to mix the two containers in and I would suggest getting some better gloves. The ones that came with it came apart on me the first time I was out and the stuff is IMPOSSIBLE to get off of your hands. Maybe there's some solvent that will work but I couldn't find it.

This brings me to the actual application of the liner. I had to buy two of these things because the first time I went out to apply the liner I took too long and the stuff ended up hardening too quickly. Maybe if you only mix half of the stuff at a time it'd be easier but just be aware of the fact that you have a very limited amount of time to use the stuff before it hardens to the point where you cannot spread it out anymore. Anyway I ended up getting about half the bed done the first time, and then the second time I did the other half and had a bunch of the liner stuff left over. They claim there's enough there for a 6ft bed but it seems to me that you'd need about one and a half of these things unless you're better at applying the stuff thinly and evenly than I am. I also applied it along the top of the bed and even down a couple of inches due to a bit of rust areas that were there. Maybe that had something to do with it as well...

The first time I applied the liner the roller worked great and rolled quite easily. The second time however it was very difficult to get it to roll at all, so I ended up taking the roller off and just rolling it by hand. I think the important part here is to make it so that the bottom of the bed, the wheel wells, and the top rails of the bed have a more rough texture to them so that things tend to slip less.

Now that it's all done I'm quite happy with the liner, although I havent put anything on it yet since there's a 72 hour period where it is suggested you dont put a full load on it. From the half that has dried already it seems like it should work out quite well, and for about a tenth the cost of getting a local place to do it for me.

As a final note I'll mention that I'm not too concerned about small areas where the liner is a little too thin or comes off a bit from use, as Canadian Tire also sells a cheap motomaster "bedliner in a can". Although it would likely be more espensive to use this from the get go, and I would wonder a bit about the quality of it, I think it should probably be good for any areas that'll need touching up over the years.

I hope someone finds this useful. Any questions drop me a line...

Here is a picture of the stuff drying as I write this. (Warning: its about 2megs)
http://www.engr.mun.ca/~ncoffey/bedliner006.jpg