A couple months back I did sand down my whole bed with 120 grit sand paper. I was planning on just painting the bed with primer and doing a single stage black paint on the inside. I had a bunch of black paint available that I could have used up but it just wouldn't have been a smart thing to do. I just couldn't waste the time and paint on something I knew wasn't going to be a long term covering for this Dodge 2500 bed. Going into this spray in bedliner job I was pretty happy because I had already sanded the bed down quit a bit. But I have been using the truck in the meantime
spilling oil and other things in the truck recently so I knew I had to sand the whole thing down again.
Me and my buddy Joe transported this Audi A8 engine block in the back of the Dodge the past weekend and did a great job spilling oil ALL over the bed. We were slipping and sliding all around and I did the splits over the side of the bed at one point. :P I knew in the back of my mind that I would have to go the extra mile to make sure the bed was prepped for the bedliner that was to come.
The guys at the shop I did the work at gave me a LOT of tips on how to do a good job on the bedliner.
- WEAR A DUST MASK! Or you will be spitting sanded paint in no time!
- Make sure and sand the whole thing down with 80 grit paper
- Use a 3M 80 bodymans rotary sander to get around the curves
- Use the coarsest sand paper as you really want to scuff it up good
- If in doubt that you didn't sand it good enough... do it again!
- Use a sanding block to get between the grooves in the bed floor
- Make sure you have a BIG air compressor or one that can keep up with air tool and paint gun volume and demand.
- Grab a DA sander to speed sand as much of the flat area
- Use a welding type wire brush for rough, cracked grooves or welded areas
- Use high quality painters tape the is tough but flexible for curves
- Sand to the edges and then tape it... then sand along the tape