Spray Bed Liner Chassis Protection?
 

Hey all.

I saw a commercial on TV (which I rarely watch, BTW) for Duplicolor spray-on bed liner for trucks--allegedly with Kevlar in it. So i'm thinking to myself: wouldn't this be a cheap, easy way of keeping our chassis plates (and bottom screws!) from grinding themselves into oblivion? Now obviously, if you're gonna spray this onto the bottom of the chassis, you'd have to mask off the holes so as not to cover up the screws, but it certainly seems like a good idea.

I'd happily try it myself, but up here in Quebec the weather has gotten rather chilly and wet. Has anyone else tried this method and if so, what kind of results did you get?

Bed Liner (Roll on or Spray) is inherently heavy. If you want to use it on your basher for looks and protection, that's one thing. But on a racer, it's going to hurt more than help.

You can buy a 20"x12" roll of 12mil thick vinyl for $8. That's enough to cover a chassis two or three times, and it weighs a lot less than a Bed Liner. Also, if it's damaged, you simply peel and replace. It would be much harder to touch up the bed liner to have it look decent. That, and it'd be much easier to sell a vehicle not covered with a permanent coating.

Bed liner = highly abrasive surface = lots of resistance when you bottom out = slow you down.

Wouldn't the weight depend on the amount of material used? I'm thinking that it applies a bit like thick paint, which can be layered as needed. Vinyl does seem like an interesting idea too, though as I'm exploring different options at this point.

Yes and no. The cheap can spray-on stuff you find at Wallyworld or the auto parts store, is just spray paint with sand in it, that scratches quite easily. The much more expensive spray-on kits (and the roll-on variety) are very thick. Rhino Lining is sprayed on anywhere from 1/8"-1/4" thick. That's 125-250mil. Other brands of home-applied bedliners are around that figure as well.

I'm sure you can go thin on the application, but it will suffer durability issues. I can imagine it would be a nightmare to mask all the screw holes, however.

At this point you can get new factory chassis off ebay for not a whole
lot more than a set of tires.

True, but I like to keep the pretty anodizing intact so the marshals have something nice to look at while they flip me. :lol: