How to Repair a Truck Bed
If you own a pick up truck, the chances are you rely on your truck bed. The truck bed is what makes a pick up extremely practically with its ability to carry almost any type of object safely and easily. From time to time, your truck bed will become damaged, whether it is dents, nicks, scratches or rust and rot due to the elements. If you have already damaged your pick up truck bed or would like to prevent future damage, here are some tips.
Stopping or Preventing Rust on a Truck Bed
One of the biggest dangers to a truck bed is rust. Most truck beds are exposed to the elements 365 days a year. While truck beds are usually protected with undercoating and paint, after a few years, these compounds sometimes don't offer as much protection as they ought to. For those truck owners that see their truck bed slowly succumbing to rust one product that is available is a brush on bed liner kit. The brush on bed liner kit is a liquid that is brushed on similar to paint. This liquid liner is made of polyurethane/rubber and is extremely strong. Applying this liquid bed liner is quick, easy and affordable, usually costing less than $100. With a liquid bed liner installed, you can prevent more damage from rust, scratches and nicks.
If you already have a lot of rot, a liquid bed liner won't do the trick. You will need to stop the rust dead in its tracks by removing it.
- Once you have located the rotted and rusted out pieces of metal in your truck bed, remove them with a metal cutter, pliers, whatever does the job.
- Take a piece of metal that has been treated to resist rust and cut to the size of the hole plus about 1 inch to 2 inches larger. You will be bolting this new piece of sheet metal to cover the hole.
- Use bolts made for outdoor use to fasten the sheet metal to the truck bed. Try to use carriage bolts, so the bolts are flush with the sheet metal. This way you won't trip over them or your items in your truck bed won't get snagged.
- For best results paint over the sheet metal and entire truck bed or use a liner to protect the top of the truck bed from further damage.
Fixing a Dent on Your Truck Bed
Dents are quite common on truck beds making that new or great looking truck less attractive. The good news is that most dents are fairly easy to fix on a truck bed without a lot of time, labor or money. Most dents to truck beds do not include scratches to paint or other types of damage making them pretty painless to fix.
- One of the easiest methods to fix dents on a truck bed is to knock out a dent. If you have access to the underneath of the truck bed, you can use a rubber mallet on the area of the dent to knock back the dent.
- Besides the above method, there are a few gadgets that are sold that use the strength of suction to pull out the dent. These machines are fairly inexpensive, but might not work on extremely tough dents.
- The third way to fix a dent is to actually make a small hole into the center of the dent and insert a pulling tool through the dent. Once in place, pull up the tool and it pops out the dent. After the dent has been popped out, you can cover up the small hole you made with filler, sand it down and use a little touch up paint to finish it up.
It should be noted that most truck beds are used for their utility and not necessarily admired for their aesthetics. Obviously, you will want to fix any damage to your truck bed that can take away its practicality, but if your truck is old or considered to be your work horse, a strong bed liner is the best way to prevent damage to it.
