Slowly but surely we at TFLtruck are starting to see more and more owners of older, yet beloved trucks put a fresh coat of bedliner on their rigs instead of going through the monumental hassle and expense of repainting it. In this video, intern Kase’s housemate goes through the process of coating his 2002 Toyota Tacoma to give it a completely new look. He bought for $5,500 with 140,000 miles on the odometer and wanted a cheap way to make it look fresh and add more durability.
3 Pros to Bedlining a Whole Vehicle:
1. Durability – In this case, the engine and chassis to this Taco were in great shape considering it’s a Colorado truck. Covering its skin with liner will protect it against dings, chips, and other insults for years and years. It also serves as a sort of instant dent repair as the coating makes small dings and hail damage sorta disappear. Spray it and forget it.
2. Cheap – We went with 2 boxes of Raptor Liner coating. Throw in the cost the spray gun and other materials and my buddy was out all of $300. Cost for a new paint job would cost at least ten times more. One caveat: We already had a commercial grade air compressor.
3. Quick – From prep to spraying on the bedliner to peeling off the tape clocked in at about 5 hours.
3 Cons to Covering a Vehicle in Bedliner:
1. Looks – You either like or hate the look of your vehicle when done. It’s not a look that you’re going to absolutely love. The look makes perfect sense on some vehicles. But on others, it can look absolutely ridiculous. And unfortunately, you won’t know if you got a cool look or dork mobile until you spray it on. In our case, we think the Tacoma looks okay in the desert beige job.
2. No Turning Back – If you hate the look, tough. You’re stuck with it it forever. There’s no easy or quick way to get that stuff off your truck. It’s designed to stick forever, right? And even if you get it all off, you still have to repaint the truck.
3. Weight – That material adds weight to your truck. Kase figured out that it adds 7/10th of a pound for every square foot of surface covered. Or think of it this way, the total weight of the kit (we used 8 bottles of liner) is going to be added to the weight of your rig.
For my roommate, the results are just fine. He started with a badly dinged and scratched Tacoma and now he’s got a bulletproof exterior that will handle winters with ease and make his truck easy to spot in a packed ski area parking lot. To see how he did it click on the video at the top of this post. Or just let us know what you think of the decision by dropping a comment below.
