lerxst@pop.erols.com wrote:
> OK, so none of you chose to or could answer my EQ question from last
> night. Here is my next one: I want to get a bed liner. My DAK is
> only a couple of weeks old and I want to get it installed BEFORE I
> have to put something in the back of it that will scratch or dent the
> bed. I know NOTHING about them. Any suggestions, things to look out
> for, brands, anything?
I'd look into the spray on bed coatings. My Dakota's coming in next week,
so I'm getting the Mopar liner for free, but even with that I'm going to
change over to a Line-X bed coating (http://www.line-x.com/) later on. I
personally don't really like the plastic liners, but I'm certainly not
going to refuse a free one. And hey . . . the Mopar liner's got cup
holders on the tailgate!
>From the information I gathered when I did my research on spray-ons, if
you decide to go with a spray-on liner (which I recommend, personally)
I'd suggest that you stay away from color matching (everyone I spoke with
said the colors are very bad with fading) and check the work at the local
shops available to you. Here in Athens (NE Georgia) the work from the
Rhino shop (http://www.rhinolinings.com/) I've seen isn't very impressive
(globs of coating in places, messy edges, and an ugly sort of grey
coating rather than the normal black), but the local Line-X shop does
good work. These spray-on liner companies are apparently selling
franchises very quickly, and anyone who jumps at the offer will be the
one doing your bed, or running the shop where it's done. There's probably
a lot more quality difference in the work than in the chemicals used in
the coating material. If I'm right it means the most reliable way to
determine which liner to go with is to check the local shops' work, and
the brand name doesn't tell you a lot.
Locally it costs $325 to get an under-the-rail Line-X coating done, and
an extra $50 ($375) for an over-the-rail coating (I suspect the added
cost has more to do with extra work due to more masking than it does the
relatively small amount of extra material). If I remember correctly the
other coating shops were charging about the same, except for one
independent guy who's trying to undercut the others by about $25.
Hope this helps.
Skeptic X
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Jun 20 2003 - 12:08:48 EDT