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In a perfect
world we could have been in the spray booth during the application,
but this wasn't possible. The installer wears protective
paint overalls and a full respirator mask during the spray process, and
there is only one breathing connection inside.
We did get
a full briefing of what happens, though.
LINE-X touts
the use of its high pressure spray process as providing a uniform consistency
void of sags, drips or pooling. In
fact, as the material is sprayed in at over 2000-psi, a unique chemical
process occurs whereby the material is permanently bonded and becomes
tact free in less than 10 seconds. The spray itself is about one-foot
across and comes out in a circular pattern.
The installer
will stand on a stool on the outside of one side of the bed and work
in a back-and-forth manner, making five side-by-side passes to cover
the bed. This process is repeated at least twice before moving to the
other side of the truck to do it all over again.
The
walls of the bed are sprayed in much the same way, albeit with only two
side-by-side passes as opposed the five on the floor. Before an installer
ever makes it into the booth to spray a customer’s
truck he or she will have already spent considerable time honing their
skills both through LINE-X’s corporate training and typically on
a “junk” truck used just for practice.
Skilled
installers will have developed a tried-and-true spraying cadence ensuring
a consistent finish. They also get a good workout during the approximately
15 minutes in the booth since the spray gun and associated hoses weigh
somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 pounds.
Once spraying
has wrapped up it takes just two minutes to exhaust the booth and then
we get our first glimpse of our newly sprayed bedliner.
While
the chemical reaction and high pressure process left the material
relatively warm to the touch, it is (as advertised) tact-free. We
can't see any of the truck’s native paint color underneath all
the paper and masking, but the blue appears to be a close match if not
slightly too bright. About 2-1/2 gallons of material have
been utilized – it would have been slightly more if we had been
spraying the tailgate too. In addition to a visual inspection to
confirm the expected results, Brad also uses a sophisticated electronic
digital thickness gauge to confirm the thickness of the bedliner at multiple
points. Everything checks out perfectly.
In a standard
LINE-X installation the truck then exits the spray booth. The
LINE-X XTRA process includes one additional step though; the DuPont Kevlar
embedded composite urethane coating is applied as a final coat. To
be clear, LINE-X actually offers the XTRA product for both traditional
black bedliners and of course for color bedliners since the additional
physical and U/V protection can be utilized in either case.
After approximately
10 minutes the installer is back in the booth, this time spraying the
XTRA coating using a standard automotive paint gun. The material is “painted” onto
the just-sprayed bedliner in long, even strokes.
Peeking
in through a small propped-open window this time, we can see how the
XTRA product has changed the bed’s
color appearance. Whereas earlier we thought the material looked a bit
too brilliant we are now looking at a deeper shade of blue. LINE-X
indicated to us that this is all part of the process. Whereas the
LINE-X material was tactless in a matter of seconds, the urethane coating
needs about 20 minutes to completely dry. Because other trucks
were being prepped in the shop – and in particular sanded – our
truck remained safely sequestered in the spray booth for some time.
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