Most people with a pickup truck use it fairly regularly to haul things. Whether it's furniture, tools, or construction supplies you'll notice pretty quickly that anything you haul in a truck is going to mess up the finish over time. Luckily, there are a couple different ways to prevent this. If you've got the money to spare and don't want to bother with doing the extra work, you can get a custom drop in liner installed at most auto repair shops. Otherwise, you'll need to get a DIY liner. It should be mentioned that DIY truck bed liners can either be sprayed on or brushed on, like any latex paint. This guide is going to assume you're using spray on liner but it works just as well for the brush on variety. No matter which kind you use, though, putting it on can be fairly difficult if you're not familiar with how to do it, so read these steps carefully before you do anything.
First off, you're going to need to take a few steps to get ready to spray the liner on. If you've done a good bit of painting, you're probably familiar with most of these steps already. You need to remove anything that's not getting painted before you start working. This includes the cargo tie points and any rubber plugs in the bed. You're also going to want to remove the tailgate, as this will be painted separately. The rubber plugs should be easy enough to remove, but you're most likely going to want a socket wrench to remove the cargo tie points. This step doesn't take very long, so take the extra time to make sure you didn't miss any plugs. The last thing you want is to spray on the liner and have it ruined in a couple of years because you missed a small plug that's been moving around under the liner. Once that's done, you can move on to the second prep step.
This is a pretty quick step and it shouldn't cause any hassle, especially for anyone who's done any amount of painting, but it is fairly important. You need to get a good sized roll of scotch or painter's tape, as well as some heavy paper, and tape off everything you don't want painted. You can do this the long way, covering every part of the back of your truck in paper and taping it down, but there is a faster way. First, put the paper over the back window and tape it in place. The bottom of your back window will serve as a good marker, in most cases, for how high up the back you want your liner to go. Simply tape the paper in a straight line, going out in both directions, even with the bottom of the window. After that, you simply tape the paper along the edge of the truck bed so that the side you didn't tape is pointing away from the truck. This will give you a good margin of error for when you're spraying. As long as you're careful, you shouldn't get liner anywhere but in the bed. The tailgate is fairly easy to tape, luckily, since you're basically only spraying a square. Four lines of tape and paper and you're done. Once you're done with that, the hard prep work begins.
This is where the process starts to get a little time consuming. You're going to have to scuff up the truck's bed and the inside of the tailgate with sandpaper in order to give the liner a surface to bond to. If you have a fairly new truck, you've got an easy way to tell when you've sanded enough. Essentially, you want to sand until the paint job doesn't look shiny anymore. If the truck is older and doesn't really have a shine, you're basically just scuffing the bed clean. One of the worst things you can do, as anyone who's painted with latex paint can tell you, is try to use paint that solidifies into a sheet on a dirty surface. Over the years, this can lead to bubbles under the lining, meaning you'll have to tear it out and start again. This is not a fun task, as you can imagine. Once you're done prepping the truck bed and tailgate, you're almost ready to spray.
Once you've got the truck bed and tailgate nice and scuffed, you're going to need to get rid of the loose paint powder and dirt that's lying in the bed now. This step is really as easy as taking a vacuum to the whole bed and either vacuuming or sweeping off the tailgate. After you've got the loose stuff sucked away, you're going to need to clean it with acetone. For obvious safety reasons, rubber gloves and a painter's mask or gas mask are essential for this step. You'll want to do this cleaning in a well ventilated area, even with your breathing protection, so make sure your garage has a good vent if you're not doing this outside. The upside of this step is that it shouldn't take too long to finish. Acetone is never fun to work with but it gets the job done pretty quickly. Once you've finished giving the bed and tailgate a good thorough cleaning, you're ready to start spraying.
This is the relatively easy part of the process. Take the time to read the manufacturer's instructions, as they may vary slightly from brand to brand, before continuing. If they say something different from this guide, follow the instructions. Now, being careful to stay inside your painted area, you're going to spray your first coat on. Do your best to move your hand steadily while you spray it so you get an even coat. Most liners require three coats so you need to let that dry and repeat the process twice more. After the last coat has dried, you reinstall the plugs, cargo tie points, and tailgate. With that last step, you're done installing your new bed liner.
That's all there is to it. Installing a DIY liner is a fairly time consuming process but it's not overly difficult. Take your time and you'll end up with a quality liner you can be proud of. Just remember, any time that the manufacturer's directions say something different than this guide, you should follow the manufacturer's directions.
