zack
Member
- First Name
- Zack
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2023
- Threads
- 1
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 21
- Location
- Des Moines, IA
- Vehicles
- 2023 Ford Lightning Lariat ER
- Thread starter
- #1
Hi all,
New to the forum and lightning ownership, but already I've found a lot of helpful tips here. I've seen some other posts about doing your own bed liner, and I just finished doing mine last night. I figured I'd throw my experience and pictures out there to help others.
To get started, I ordered the U-POL Raptor Black kit on Amazon with the gun and 4 quarts included. I have a small 6 gallon air compressor with a regulator. This worked well. I also bought a 3 inch Nylon cup brush, degreaser, Frog tape, masking plastic, and a respirator at the local Menards. (you might need an air adapter for the gun, but I had some already)
I started off by taking off all of the miscellaneous bed hardware (including the tailgate cover) using a T30 bit. I popped out the covers in the front of the bed, but left the lights, switch, and power center alone.
Then I began following the process as instructed by cleaning and degreasing the entire truck bed. Nothing much to note here, except it in was mid 90s out, and I was sitting in a black metal box in the sun.
Sanding felt very weird, being that the truck is brand new, but I basically used a drill with the cup brush going over every surface that I planned to have covered in the liner. It was around this point that I had to start making decisions on where exactly I wanted my lines to be.
I was flipping back and forth on what I wanted to do with the tailgate, since it has the big plastic piece, but as I mentioned, I did end up taking this off and lining around it. I left the tailgate on for the whole process because I didn't want to jack with messing anything up regarding the power lift tailgate.
After sanding, I once again got out the degreaser (I was using Simply Green) and the garden hose to get all the dust cleaned out. It was still sunny and hot so this was drying up pretty fast.
Next, I got out the Frog tape and started getting my lines where I wanted them. Around the top, I basically followed the plastic trim. I left the top rail against the window as paint for future bed cover potential. On the tailgate, I basically ringed the area where the plate will be, avoiding the latch type areas.
I masked off the power center, the lights, the front holes, and put tape in all of the bolt holes. I also flip flopped on whether to mask the bed bolts or not, but ultimately decided to cover them with liner.
You'll note I didn't mention masking off the light switch, because I forgot, which was my main F up of the process, I'll get to this in a bit.
After I was happy with all the lines, I came back around with the pretaped plastic, and just followed the green lines slightly back. Thankfully it wasn't windy.
It was finally cooling off by this point, which was my goal because I wasn't sure spraying in the blazing sun was such a great idea.
The gun was easy to put together, just thread on the intake piece and use your own supplied air line connector (which luckily I had a few laying around, but this is probably going to screw people.)
As for the air compressor, I was using a 6 gallon one, which was fine. I ended up setting the regulator close to 75-80 psi because I was noticing the pressure
dropped quite a bit on the regulator gauge when I was holding in the trigger. This seemed to work out.
I mixed up the 8oz of the hardener with one of the bottles and got to spraying. My original goal was to do all the corners and technical areas, but with a black truckbed and the sun setting, this turned out too be too hard to track. I basically just went front to back and did 2 bottles. I had two main issues.
Early in the spraying, I swung the gun a bit without the trigger held in while I was repositioning, and it drooled out about a 2 foot line of the mix across an area I'd just sprayed. I jumped out of the truck and grabbed a rag and quickly wiped this line up and resprayed over it. There isn't much evidence of this in the final result.
Issue number 2 was that I forgot to tape off the light switch. I noticed this after I sprayed over it. Again, jumped out of the truck, rag with the hardener on it seemed to wipe it clean, and then I just had to quick mask it off while not messing up all the areas I'd sprayed.
I finished up bottle 2 and ate a late supper.
After eating, I sprayed bottle 3 all over everything, but I really couldn't find any areas that seemed lacking even after bottle 2. After bottle 3, I decided to save bottle 4 and 1/4 of the hardener in case the future needs some touch ups.
I started with taking all the plastic off, and then I started pulling all the tape lines off. I'd seen that you didn't want to do this when it was overly set or you'd have a tough time. It was just tacky enough for me to have a pretty satisfying time removing it all. Didn't have a single issue with any tape getting stuck anywhere.
It was starting to get firm to the touch by the time I put most of the gear away, so I slapped all the hardware back on and took some pictures.
Total time was about 4.5 hours with a meal break and 0 experience spraying anything ever. I'm typing this the next morning and I'd say it came out great! If you look closely, you might be able to identify where the gun dropped out an unexpected blob.
Next morning
A quick video I took while putting it back together -
New to the forum and lightning ownership, but already I've found a lot of helpful tips here. I've seen some other posts about doing your own bed liner, and I just finished doing mine last night. I figured I'd throw my experience and pictures out there to help others.
To get started, I ordered the U-POL Raptor Black kit on Amazon with the gun and 4 quarts included. I have a small 6 gallon air compressor with a regulator. This worked well. I also bought a 3 inch Nylon cup brush, degreaser, Frog tape, masking plastic, and a respirator at the local Menards. (you might need an air adapter for the gun, but I had some already)
I started off by taking off all of the miscellaneous bed hardware (including the tailgate cover) using a T30 bit. I popped out the covers in the front of the bed, but left the lights, switch, and power center alone.
Then I began following the process as instructed by cleaning and degreasing the entire truck bed. Nothing much to note here, except it in was mid 90s out, and I was sitting in a black metal box in the sun.
Sanding felt very weird, being that the truck is brand new, but I basically used a drill with the cup brush going over every surface that I planned to have covered in the liner. It was around this point that I had to start making decisions on where exactly I wanted my lines to be.
I was flipping back and forth on what I wanted to do with the tailgate, since it has the big plastic piece, but as I mentioned, I did end up taking this off and lining around it. I left the tailgate on for the whole process because I didn't want to jack with messing anything up regarding the power lift tailgate.
After sanding, I once again got out the degreaser (I was using Simply Green) and the garden hose to get all the dust cleaned out. It was still sunny and hot so this was drying up pretty fast.
Next, I got out the Frog tape and started getting my lines where I wanted them. Around the top, I basically followed the plastic trim. I left the top rail against the window as paint for future bed cover potential. On the tailgate, I basically ringed the area where the plate will be, avoiding the latch type areas.
I masked off the power center, the lights, the front holes, and put tape in all of the bolt holes. I also flip flopped on whether to mask the bed bolts or not, but ultimately decided to cover them with liner.
You'll note I didn't mention masking off the light switch, because I forgot, which was my main F up of the process, I'll get to this in a bit.
After I was happy with all the lines, I came back around with the pretaped plastic, and just followed the green lines slightly back. Thankfully it wasn't windy.
It was finally cooling off by this point, which was my goal because I wasn't sure spraying in the blazing sun was such a great idea.
The gun was easy to put together, just thread on the intake piece and use your own supplied air line connector (which luckily I had a few laying around, but this is probably going to screw people.)
As for the air compressor, I was using a 6 gallon one, which was fine. I ended up setting the regulator close to 75-80 psi because I was noticing the pressure
dropped quite a bit on the regulator gauge when I was holding in the trigger. This seemed to work out.
I mixed up the 8oz of the hardener with one of the bottles and got to spraying. My original goal was to do all the corners and technical areas, but with a black truckbed and the sun setting, this turned out too be too hard to track. I basically just went front to back and did 2 bottles. I had two main issues.
Early in the spraying, I swung the gun a bit without the trigger held in while I was repositioning, and it drooled out about a 2 foot line of the mix across an area I'd just sprayed. I jumped out of the truck and grabbed a rag and quickly wiped this line up and resprayed over it. There isn't much evidence of this in the final result.
Issue number 2 was that I forgot to tape off the light switch. I noticed this after I sprayed over it. Again, jumped out of the truck, rag with the hardener on it seemed to wipe it clean, and then I just had to quick mask it off while not messing up all the areas I'd sprayed.
I finished up bottle 2 and ate a late supper.
After eating, I sprayed bottle 3 all over everything, but I really couldn't find any areas that seemed lacking even after bottle 2. After bottle 3, I decided to save bottle 4 and 1/4 of the hardener in case the future needs some touch ups.
I started with taking all the plastic off, and then I started pulling all the tape lines off. I'd seen that you didn't want to do this when it was overly set or you'd have a tough time. It was just tacky enough for me to have a pretty satisfying time removing it all. Didn't have a single issue with any tape getting stuck anywhere.
It was starting to get firm to the touch by the time I put most of the gear away, so I slapped all the hardware back on and took some pictures.
Total time was about 4.5 hours with a meal break and 0 experience spraying anything ever. I'm typing this the next morning and I'd say it came out great! If you look closely, you might be able to identify where the gun dropped out an unexpected blob.
Next morning
A quick video I took while putting it back together -
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