You can have a great "bed liner" for way less money than you'd think. While my application was on Project Suzushi, a 1988 Suzuki Samurai convertible, these steps are applicable to any vehicle.
Here's how:
Materials required
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Tools required
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Preparation
Remove all interior items that will be in the way of applying the coating. This meant, for me:
- Three seats
- Carpet
- Large rubber body drain plugs (I left in place the smaller plastic plugs that are installed in some places inside the body; they don't help drainage)
- Shifter-boot bezels and shifter boots (you'll need the socket wrench and 10mm socket here, except for the two forward-most bolts which will probably require an open-end or box wrench to loosen them due to interference from the heater).
- Roll-bar (you'll need the impact driver here, and the hammer, if you're using a hand-driver)
- Lower front seat-belt mounting plates (Rather than remove the front seat-belts entirely, I just extended them full length and placed the lower mounting plates up on the front half of the top, out of the way.)
- Rear outer seat-belt ends
- All rear interior trim panels
- Passenger side "package shelf"
- Panel over the interior section of the fuel-filler in the rear
If you're carrying the coating over the top of the rear body panels, then you also need to remove:
- Bow for the rear section of your soft-top
- Spare tire (use your lug wrench)
- Spare tire mounting bracket (you may need the impact driver here as well)
I also rolled up the leads for my rear speakers and stuffed them in the dash out of the way, and released and either lifted up or tucked away other miscellaneous vehicle wiring. This job is also way easier if you've made your front doors removable and take them off. If not, this is a good time to make them removable! Once the doors were out of the way, I also removed the "cording" along the door frame edges and the rubber seal around the tailgate opening.
Remove the carpet snaps if you have them and you'll not be putting the carpet back in. I cut them off or popped them out by driving the chisel-tip putty knife against the base of them with a rubber mallet.
Remove
the asphalt coating on the front floor pans, if applied. I recommend you do not
use a heat gun to try and make this go faster as it will just make the stuff a
gooey mess. I happened to do this job on a relatively cool day (around 50°F
in the morning) and found that just inserting the putty knife under the edge
of the asphalt and tapping the handle with a rubber mallet made it shatter
and, for the most part, pop right off the floor.
I used a razor knife to remove all large "beads" of squeezed-out sealant from the body joints to make them as flush and square as possible. I did this because I thought it would make my finished interior look better, but it turned out to be fortunate that I was being picky. I discovered -- after getting the excess sealant cut loose -- that at the out-board front corners of both sides of the front floor pan, water had either seeped in through the joint or under the bead of sealant and was beginning to rust the pan and fender-well. It was bad enough to require some grinding (I used a large "Dremel"-type tool and an assortment of shaped grinding bits) to remove it, rather than just a little sanding. I imagine that if I lived where it was wetter, I'd have had the beginnings of some serious body rot.
Move the vehicle to a well-ventilated area and use a rag and Xylene to remove all of the remainder of the asphalt from the front floor-pans. If you've done your job well chipping it off, there will be very little clean-up, and it'll come right off.
Next, make sure any holes that you may have in your body are filled with a good quality body filler and sanded, just as if you were going to repaint. This was a step I was fortunate enough to be able to skip.
Give all surfaces to be coated a once-over with the 60-grit paper. You don't have to make the surface real rough, but you do want it to have some "tooth".
I was planning on lining the entire inside of the rear of Suzushi, up and over the top rail; the inside of the tail gate (also over the top rail), the front lower kick panels, the section of the body up to the targa bar joint, and all of the floors. After looking things over for a bit, I also prepped the door sills, including the section of body immediately over the plastic rocker-panel trim (which I loosened and pulled out of the way), and the flat section of the outer body where the top snaps are mounted, all the way forward under the targa bar to the rear edge of the front door frame. After a final look around the vehicle, I also decided to remove some rust from the body around the fuel filler (on the outside of the vehicle) and coat the circular indentation there as well. I figured that was about as far as a gallon was gonna get me.
Vacuum up all dust and debris.
Note: Make sure the vehicle is in a very well ventilated area from this point forward. You'll be working with solvents that are flammable and potentially toxic if inhaled in concentrated amounts.
Using Xylene, clean all surfaces to be coated. Cote-L recommends you make sure to do this, as the resulting well-cleaned surface will greatly improve the coating's ability to adhere. Xylene is a low evaporation rate solvent that leaves no residue behind, unlike other solvents such as lacquer thinner. If you're working over the space of a couple of days, you should do this cleaning just before you coat the truck, leaving only enough time for the Xylene to evaporate.
Mask any areas where you may be concerned about splattering or dripping Durabak. In my case the only areas masked (using 1½" masking tape) were at the lower edge of the vertical flat area of the body where the top-snaps are mounted on both of the rear quarter panels and the tailgate, the area just above the bottom-most flat section of the body over the rocker panel trim, and the very ends of the fender flares.
Application
Chuck your stirring bit in your drill, then grab a flat-blade screwdriver to pop off the clips holding the lid on the Durabak. Once they're off, you're still gonna have a pretty tough time getting the lid off; Durabak is shipped with an air-tight seal so it won't cure in the can. Keep at it and sooner or later you'll get it off. (Probably with a loud pop, if my experience is any indication.)
Stir the Durabak very well. It's gonna take a while even with a stirring bit in a drill. I don't recommend trying to do it by hand.
For
roller application, use the roller supplied with your Durabak, as
it's designed to spread and distribute all the little ground-up recycled
tire particles suspended in the polyurethane. If you're brushing on your
coating (as I did) use a decent quality brush. I'd recommend you plan on
sacrificing the brush, as you're probably not gonna want to attempt to clean
it. You're looking for a brush good enough to not shed lots of bristles
while not being too expensive. For spray application, you'll have to thin
the product, using Xylene, approximately 10 percent.
Cote-L recommends that roller-applied or brushed finishes have the second coat applied at a direction 90° from the direction of application of the first coat for best finish results. As I was using a brush, I applied the first coat going across the vehicle, and the second coat going lengthwise.
Application with a brush required a little experimentation and development of a "technique" applicable to the product. I found it best to keep the brush quite well loaded, and to not "brush it out" too much. The object is to get a relatively thin, even coating that distributes the rubber particles well. Stir often! I started in the rear bed area so I could experiment a bit on an easy-to-reach surface. I wasn't especially worried (correctly, as it turned out) to get a real even distribution of the particles, as I figured the second coat would fill in the gaps. Things looked sorta clumpy after the first coat.
Note: If you want it to match, don't forget to coat the panel that covers the fuel-filler area inside the back of the truck. You removed it way back at the beginning of this!
Watch for drips! I had no problem at all with spattering, but I did keep a sharp eye out for drips or runs. Durabak is relatively thick (about the consistency of a runny milk-shake) and will drip off the brush if you're keeping it well loaded as I did. Clean up promptly with a Xylene-soaked rag any drips or runs onto areas you wish to leave un-coated. Runs into already coated areas should be brushed out immediately. I didn't worry about holes in the body for bolts or the like, except to try to avoid globbing any serious amounts of coating into them.
By the time I got all done with the first coat, the area I'd first applied was almost ready for the second. You want the first coat dry to the touch before applying the second. I'd been working about 3½ to four hours at this point and noticed the Durabak was beginning to thicken up a bit so I added a few ounces of Xylene and mixed well. You should keep an eye on this, because the cure rate varies dependent on both temperature and humidity. Higher temperatures and/or higher humidity will cause Durabak to cure more rapidly. The day I was working was only about 60°F, but the humidity was quite high.
Apply your second coat (at 90° to the direction of application of the first coat if using a roller or brush). If you're doing things right, the coating should rapidly look much more even and with a much more uniform looking distribution of rubber particles. Once again, continue to stir early and often, and thin your can of Durabak with small amounts of Xylene if you see things getting thick.
I had a fair amount of Durabak left at the end of the second coat, so I decided to add a third coat to the floor pans in front, the transmission tunnel, the rear floor pans and rear bed floor. Application was the same as with the first two coats. I kept a strong light on my work (daylight was fading) to make sure I caught any areas that looked "thin" at this point. The dark gray Durabak I used is kind of semi-transparent when wet, so it wasn't difficult to keep an eye out for thin spots as I applied each coat.
Remove
any masking applied as soon as you're done with an area. I took care to
not get much slop-over onto the tape, and by pulling the tape while folding it
back along itself with the end I was holding angled away from the coating at
about 45°, the tape came right off and left a clean, sharp edge. I did the
circular indentation around the fuel filler freehand, so I had nothing but
straight masking to remove.
Toss your brush or roller, or clean your gun and pot. Use Xylene generously for cleaning and clean things immediately. I hate using gloves while painting, and usually have no trouble cleaning up afterwards. However, I'll use gloves next time I apply any Durabak! I had quite a bit on my hands, and hadn't been getting it off promptly while working. As a result, much of what was on my hands had already cured! It took about four days for me to get the rest of it off by picking at it and rubbing at it while under the shower in the morning.
Allow your new coating to dry overnight.
Since I had the time, I spray-painted nice new coats of shiny black paint on my roll-bar, front seat-belt mounting plates and the bezels for the shifter boots before I re-installed them. Then I reinstalled all the rest of the stuff and hooked the wiring back down. If you have any bolt- or screw-holes with Durabak partially clogging them up, use a sharp X-Acto knife to carefully slice the stuff in the hole away from the rest of your coating. You can then usually use tweezers or a pair of needle-nose pliers to grab the cut-away bit and yank it free of the hole.
Comments and results information is available in the Off-Road.com Review.
One thing remained to be done: finding some way to plug the small holes from the old nylon carpet-snaps. Some of them were completely filled with Durabak, but most were not as I had made no attempt to fill them prior to applying my liner. I wanted to leave my options open, so I wanted to be able to find those holes again. I plugged them with small rubber (actually, they may be urethane) "feet" designed for use by people building or repairing electronics equipment. They've got a small groove in them and snap right in like miniature drain plugs. They were three for a dime at a local electronics parts shop.
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