anyone do hurculiner on their trucks? I want to do it on mine but it takes a long time...could I just use a sander and sand my bed down?

 

I would avoid Herculiner. As far as liners go, it's the bottom of the barrel. If you really want to go the DIY route, U-Pol Raptor Liner is very popular, with good reason.
The U-Pol product it a pure polyurethane, similar in composition to Rhino. There are big differences, chemically but the end result is similar. The Raptor liner comes in both basic black and a tintable version, meaning you can color match if you so desire.

 

I thought hurculiner was the top? Pretty expensive for a bad product I guess

 

I already have a case of hurculiner just laying around I was just curious if I could sand down the bed to make it way easier

 

With any liner, just like with paint, surface prep is vital. The entire surface to be lined needs to be abraded, right to the very edge. This will give the liner mechanical adhesion. Don't get carried away and go down to bare metal. Any exposed metal should be sprayed with a self etching primer and sanded again. When the sanding is done, blow away the dust (wear proper respiratory protection) and wipe the entire surface with Acetone. This will give the liner chemical adhesion, as well as remove any waxes or oils.

 

I will also say to stay away from hurculiner. My dad has a '79 Bronco we're restoring, and instead of going and getting another carpet we decided since it's kinda a truck, it gets bedlined floors lol. We sanded everything down, used our self etching primer, and did like 7 or 8 coats of the stuff (we bought 2 gallons, horrible mis-interpreted the job lol). We did it the same way you'd do paint, do a coat then wait for it to get tacky and add another coat. A couple months later we started to put some seats in, and as we slid the rear seats in the bed liner ripped like nothing and we could peal it up if we wanted to. Unfortunately we will have to eventually.

 

I did Herculiner around the bottom of my truck and it seems to be holding up well. Very thick stuff. Honestly, when it comes to painting, I lack prep work. I'll normally do enough sanding just to see light scratches and just wipe it off with a dry rag. That's what I did with the Herculiner also. I followed their instructions to do one very light coat and let it dry then go back through and do a normal coat. The light coat gives the heavy coat something to bond to. I'm going to disagree with it being at the bottom of liners.

Here's a picture, ignore the rocker rust lol

 

It really is though, I spent a day prepping my bed and it only lasted about a year before I was redoing it.

 

When you put it on it seems like a normal bed liner that's on your truck and won't come off. In a place like where you have it, you probably won't experience issues but in the bed you'll have issues if you slide stuff in there a lot.

 

Herculiner sucks. It looks OK when applied, but it fades really fast and looks terrible. Turns into a grayish dust and marks up everything you put in the bed. And it isn't durable, regardless of the prep (I took a DA sander and removed 75% of the paint in my bed). The chemical makeup of it will not get you the same durability of a professional spray in.

Take it from me - I've got Herculiner on my rockers, both bumpers, and in my bed.

If you are looking to go DIY, take a look at Raptor Liner. I've heard it's a much better product.