How To Install A Roll On Bed Liner Step By Step

A roll on bed liner should be tough and good looking. That's only if you do the installation properly. Skip steps and make it too easy and the coating won't stay in place. Here's how to get it right...

1. Clean your truck bed first. Before applying the coating, clean with an automotive wax and grease remover. This will be an acetone product. This is to remove any old wax, grease and other stuff that could make it hard for the liner to stick. Don't start sanding before you clean. I'll tell you why below.



2. Mask the bed rails carefully. Use masking tape to make straight, professional looking edges around where you want your bed liner to be. We used masking tape to define the edge of our liner cleanly. Cover what you don't want coated. This paint is hard to get off.



3. Sand the bed well. That means sand with very coarse abrasive to really scratch up the old paint. The bed liner liquid will stick better if your truck bed is roughed up with heavy grit sandpaper. Heavy sanding is the key, just make sure to clean out the metal particles left over from sanding. If you sand before cleaning, you will just drive old grease and wax into the paint. This is a bad start.



4. Consider priming any really rough or bare spots. If you're painting over the original paint, this may not be so important. If you're painting over a repaint, priming is a great idea.



5. Buy extra truck bed paint. We found that one gallon can of the liner paint was not quite thick enough for our needs. Extra bed paint would allow you to put a thicker liner in your truck bed. It also allows you to easily make repairs with the paint that you have left over.



6. Use a paint roller and paint brush to install your liner. It may seem like a spray-on liner application would look better, but we found that the material smoothes out very well with low cost paint rollers and brushes.

Applying a roll on bed liner is a simple way to give your truck bed protection and better looks, all done cheap. The real key to success is a good cleaning to start and some really heavy sanding. Do those and the coating is sure to work just right.

Read more about installing a roll on bed liner at our website http://www.bedlinerfortrucks.com .