Ok, so I have a black 2003 F250. I bought it used back in 2004. It had a drop-in bed liner since I bought it. I recently bought a 5th wheel, and when the dealer installed my hitch they removed the drop-in liner because it would interefre with the hitch. No problem, except that the bed underneath the liner is WHITE! I guess this was a replacement bed at some point, you can see the overspray where they obviously just painted the areas outside of the bedliner black. Anyways, there are a couple of small rust spots that will need to be tended to, but mainly I just want to cover up the white bed on my black truck. Now, my truck is a good looking truck, but it is a truck and I treat it as such. It has a few scratches here and there, and I'm not overly concerned with the bed looking pretty. I don't want it to look totally sloppy, but I dont want to spend $400 or more for a spray in liner, either. I have never painted anything to speak of, so I am looking for an easy, effective way, to paint the bed black without a lot of fuss. Honestly, if I can paint it somehow now and it last a couple years until I am more inclined to put in a spray in liner, that would be fine. Can you guys point me in the right direction? Thanks for any advice.

Bob

 

You can pick up a hericuliner roll on bed liner at autozone for $80-$100 bucks, i have heard real good things about it and im acutally going to be doing it here on mine in a few weeks.

 

As an option....scotchbrite the area and stop by Mayco, 1day paint & body, etc and see how much they want to just spray the bed.....chat with th manager to see if they have another black Ford coming in for a paint job (or any black vehicle) and explain you're not that interested in a perect match, just as long as it's shiney 7 black- they may very well cut you a good deal!

 

Macco = badd news....I dont care how cheap they are....you get what you pay for.
I would do the Herculiner as stated above. Just make sure you prep the bed as per the instructions. I want to do this to my bed sometime down the road, I really am starting to hate my plastic liner.

You could also sand it down, get a good enamel paint and brush or roll it on as well.

 

If you want to do it yourself, I would go with Herculiner, if you want to have it professionally installed, go with Line-X or Rhino Liner. I have and like the Line-X better as it's harder then the Rhino. I was able to gouge chunks out of the Rhino on my Nissan back when I had it.

 

Actually, Mayco is not that cheap, without body work their paint jobs start at $800. paint adherience is all about prep...if you prep it you will have no problems.

 

I beg to differ. I had Macco do a full paint job on a mason dump about 5 years ago. I did ALL the prep work. From dent repair , priming, removing trim,glass, grill and wetsanding. All they had to do was tape of the window openings and wipe it down. The total cost to paint the entire truck(cab and dumpbody+ extra quart of paint) was $440. That was in red, non clearcoat(as was the factory paint.) at the time for me to buy the red , non clear coat paint, it was over $800. So being i had nowhere to spray the truck,i let macco do their thing. NOW 5 years later, the truck looks almost as it left Macco, Perfect!!! Prep is everything.

If you can sand something, i would sand it and have macco spray it, after all, it is the inside of a pickup bed

 

Because of the volume, most of the painters at these 1-day paint places are really good painters. the paint that they use is name brand as well (such as GE, Sherwin Williams Automotive, etc.) and specifically designed for "fast dry" applications. They all use a hardener and typically have excellent durability- where the crutch is- is the prep. Soem just acid wash the vehicle and looking like an army of ants...allow 3 minutes for surface sanding. while others actually sand the paint and apply a sealer.

Maaco & 1-day are probably the better of the group but Earl Schieb has some nice finishes too (if you do the prep work yourself)

 

Just finished Herculining my second early Bronco. The first one was done a year ago and is holding up fine. The stuff is pretty good for the price. Just be aware that it will fade in an uncovered truck bed. They say there is a spray UV inhibitor to cover it, but I have no experience with it. If you got an 8 ft. bed, get the kit plus an extra quart. Plan for a full day to do it, takes awhile for the first coat to dry.

 

Maaco sprayed a couple of our work trucks beds for $129 each.

They also sprayed a replacement junkyard bed white for $250.

They did an excellent job.

Josh

 

You got lucky....especially since you did the prep yourself. I have seen first hand in my area how Macco paints stuff. And unless I or someone I know is immediatly selling a vehicle, it will never see the parking lot, much less the shop of a Macco. One place where I used to work my boss used to use Macco for alot of stuff. Now I know when repainting a fleet vehicle, you usually dont paint stuff like door jambs. But when 2 trucks that were completely repainted start to bubble and rust in less than a month, something is wrong there. Also I know someone that took his chebbie truck (he preped everything first, all they had to do was mask, wash, paint) and the thing was thin in spots (you could see primer thru purple paint) and it looked like once they were done painting, they thru a bunch of dust and dirt in the air, the hood and roof looked like sand paper. He got them to repaint it at no cost to him, but there were still issues. I have also seen where they did paint over dirt, plus the adhesion sucked after a couple of years.
I have repainted stuff that Macco has painted before. The guy I used to do body work with would always ask new customers if the vehicle was ever painted by Macco. If so, we would go down to either factory primer or bare metal.