HERCULINER Chrome Nerf Bars
 

1 Quart of Herculiner on my what used to be crappy chromed Nerf Bars.

They were fairly scratched, chipped, and corroding. The Previous Owner must have bumped a couple of things...

Total took me about 8 hours of actual work/beer time.

Day 1 it took me about 2 hours to:
-Remove Ner Bars from the mounts (including grinding two bold heads off since the RivNuts spun loose)
-Pop the plastics off (carefully so I could re-use the plastic inserts)

Then about 2 more hours of using the old grinder with a 50 grit sanding disc and a scouring disk to get them roughed up until i couldn't see much of the chrome gloss underneath.

Day 2 about 4 more hours of working time:
-Bought Xylol (or Xylene) to clean and prep the surface for HERCULINER.
- Hung the bars from the sawhorses
- After stirring for a couple of minutes poured about 1/4 of Herculiner out of the can and started rolling on Bar #1.
- Bar #2 used about another 1/4 of the quart.
- After the 1st coat went on the bars were about 80% covered with a little bit of steel showing between the bits of rubber
- Cleaned up my roller, handle, and roller tray with Xylol and got some grub.
-1.5 hours later came back and coated each bar with the rest of the Herculiner (~1/4 Quart per bar)
- Cleaned up the roller and pitched everything else
- Bars are 99.9% coated (Theres a small spot under one of the foot pads that i missed on the 2nd coat

Day 3:
-Let them sit for 12+ Hours in the heated garage ~60ºF to cure then moved outside in the sun for 4 more hours at ~70ºF day to finish the curing.
-30 minutes of popping plastics back in and putting new SS M8x1.25x30 bolts on BOOM she's a new looking truck!

Things to consider:
-have lots of rags
-I used a gallon of Xylol
-Used 10 latex gloves
-Long sleeve shirt recommended as I still have little black dots all over my arms.
-Go SLOW with the roller, that stuff flies everywhere (it's all over my face and is finally wearing off 3 days later)
-PREP, PREP, PREP, you can't scuff the surface enough! I did the best job I could to get the surface roughed up, time will tell how well it is adhered.
-Be careful getting the plastic parts off, the inserts for the foot pads were fairly simple to pop off the foot pad by prying the footpad away from the bar and using a long and narrow standard screwdriver i could pop the inserts off no problem. It definitely helped that the bars were warm when doing this as the foot pads were pliable.
-This stuff stinks, horribly. Ventilate your facility VERY VERY well. 3 days later and it still stinks!!!

All in all i'm really happy! Heck even the girlfriend thinks they look A LOT better. Saved myself a TON of $$$ and used up some of a rainy weekend on the project.

1 Quart HERCULINER $27 - Farm N Fleet

If you're happy with it, that's what counts, but:

1. Herc is not UV stable, it will turn to gray in a few months unless you paint it.
2. The result may have looked nicer if you had chosen a product that does not have rubber bits in it.
3. It stinks because it's mostly solvents. The quart can is about 40% solvents and 60% bedliner solids.

http://www.herculiner.com/pdf/instru...uv_topcoat.pdf

I'll UV topcoat if i start to see problems with it.

I like the rubber, it looks awesome, finished really well.

"The result may have looked nicer" - your comment - is personal preference. I didn't make a comment like "your face would have looked nicer if...." lol.
Anyway that's off topic. I wanted the rubber on there so that's why it's there.

How do you think that would look if i did my light bar in that stuff? How much did it cost?

Light bar is going to be a lot more exposed to sunlight. I'd definitely suggest applying the UV topcoat. I've only had mine on for a week... But I'm hoping that my Nerf Bars stay shaded most of the time so I'm going to let them go w/o the topcoat to see how they weather.

I think I roughly tallied up under $50 for Herculiner, roller, Xylol, etc.

Looks great!

flaking off
 

Well, I wanted to follow up with the forum. As of Jan 2015. The leading end of my driver side nerf bar's herculiner has separated from the steel bars. It's now chippping/peeling back pretty bad.
By the Fall of 2014 the herculiner had started to show some wear and looked more like someone just put a thin coat on it in several spots. I'm not sure if I'll 're-do the herculiner or go with a different product. We shall see.