Line X

[musthave]

I currently have a Land Cruiser out in Denver. It is monstalined. I did it myself and it is starting to peel a little bit. I am considering having the whole thing done with Line X. I was quoted a price of $5000 which seems like way too much to me. Does anyone have any experience with the product or no if there are places to get it done cheaper?

Any chance that somebody on the forum does them?

 

[LINUS]

The local Linex shop is a joke, buddy had his done & they screwed pooch on prep.

They also tried to extract another $2500 from a guy whose 60 they quoted in the ~$3500 zone.

So you really need to inspect the shops, since they franchise & some shops are barely even willing to run a D/A sander over the paint in a bed.

No 2 Linex shops are even close to the same, so really eyeball & listen to what locals say & have experienced with the specific shop you even consider.

I did Rhino in the pre-Linex days, we took beds down to bare metal with 60grit discs, so rough you couldn’t run your hand over it so we got good “tooth”.
The boss cared & I never had a single repair in my ~2yrs, because the owner wanted to be the final word in liners for the N Seattle area back then.

 

[TonyP]

I'm considering line-x'ing the Troopy.
I don't intend on having the Line-X shop do the prep, just the spray.
Paint/Coating is all in the prep work.

Interested in hearing what others have experienced.

 

[baldilocks]

An old neighbor of mine owned the Linex shop in the town where I lived until recently. He told me he would cut me break at $2500. According to him spraying it was not too hard but the prep would be a nightmare. The gun they use shoots at rather high pressure so linex material will end any place in the truck that is not properly blocked off line door jam cracks and of course any where else you can think of.

Linex has a product specifically for coating automobile bodies and it comes in colors other than black.

There is a reason Linex is expensive, it’s good stuff....

How would you go about removing the monstaliner to make a well prepped surface for anything else to stick too?

 

[scottryana]

Wow these prices are crazy. I had the bottom 1/2 done and it was $1100 I think.

 

[LINUS]

What @baldilocks said is spot on. - We masked using tape folded in half back on itself, 1/2 touching the object, 1/2 holding the paper coming off the rolls.

We had to do it that way to tear off the paper, then run a razor lightly to cut that bevel edge you see on exposed edges.

Going from memory we had the gun pressure about 65-70psi (had to keep shop heated 24/7, as totes of the bianary agents temp was 100% related to how we got that signature “flat but textured” -finish.
The gun was 2 hoses where the mixing happened in the gun tip that was a replaceable mixer, the gun fed from 2 seperate chem totes & one had black already mixed, and we kept a smaller one of clear that was the same stuff as the pre-mix black - to mix for people who wanted a color (why color liner is big $$$).

In the heat of Summer we turned down the PSI as we didn’t have an A/C unit & anything over 70* ambient was hotter than the shop.

FWIW, a good bed job is 3/16” in the bed floor & 1/8” on the vertical bed walls.

I’m not fond of Line-X due to the rock-hard surface, but that’s me.

— If you choose to go anything but black, be warned that it faded faster than paint, even when I talked to a Rhino shop in B’ham back when I got the Tundra.

— A new player in the bedliner for autobodies (since it’s so common now) is these guys: Bullet Liner – Spray-On Bed Liner for Truck Beds & Off-Road Vehicles.

Those guys cracked the code to colormatching paint codes, and can do real wild & complicated / multiple colorways in a final product.

Full disclosure, I’ve only seen sample tiles of their product but a buddy wants to open a shop & wants me to come onboard since I had the time in with Rhino & have had those “aww, crap” moments.
I’m jaded but only because another liner shop is locally doing really good work in black-only (they are Armor Coating franchised), so we’re already in a saturated market for how few people we are here.

But if you find you have a Bullet guy around, I’d go check them - esp if you want a color other than black.

 

[TonyP]

Apparently Line-X can color match too. Of course, I'd request samples before laying anything down.

 

[scottryana]

Yeah my Line-X was color matched. They took one of the plastic cladded panels to the Line-X distributor and had them color match it. But like was mentioned earlier the color faded.

 

[TonyP]

Yeah my Line-X was color matched. They took one of the plastic cladded panels to the Line-X distributor and had them color match it. But like was mentioned earlier the color faded.

Did they add in the UV protection? I think in the early years they had to add it?

According to the site, the new formula is fade resistant. If I pay $XXXX for a damn Line-X job on the Troopy and it fades...

LINE-X ULTRA | LINE-X
Premium | LINE-X

 

[LINUS]

I wouldn’t trust any brand to stay colormatched to your paint over time.

But that’s me.

And the only comercial one using a real colormatching is Bullet - but I don’t know enough about them yet. I do know all the others are using essentially the same formulation save Rhino has a softer urethane so it feels a little softer & isn’t as glossy as Line-X.

If you’re shooting the entire vehicle then I can sorta get onboard, but it might fade a funky hue - but if you say tried to match a Sage 40th AE (just for example) - I bet in 5 yrs you’d regret what it looks like.

I’ve seen faded burgundy & it was a nearly a pink bed in a burgundy Ford pickup. It was horrid & I’d have re-shot the bed black.

 

[musthave]

An old neighbor of mine owned the Linex shop in the town where I lived until recently. He told me he would cut me break at $2500. According to him spraying it was not too hard but the prep would be a nightmare. The gun they use shoots at rather high pressure so linex material will end any place in the truck that is not properly blocked off line door jam cracks and of course any where else you can think of.

Linex has a product specifically for coating automobile bodies and it comes in colors other than black.

There is a reason Linex is expensive, it’s good stuff....

How would you go about removing the monstaliner to make a well prepped surface for anything else to stick too?

The monstaliner is 5 years old and peeling off easily now.

 

[scottryana]

Yes, it had UV protectant and was supposed to be UV stable. This was about 5-6 years ago. It looks pretty terrible now. And if you read the fine print on the Line-X warranty it only applies to truck beds.

Did they add in the UV protection? I think in the early years they had to add it?

According to the site, the new formula is fade resistant. If I pay $XXXX for a damn Line-X job on the Troopy and it fades...

LINE-X ULTRA | LINE-X
Premium | LINE-X

 

[toyofan]

I had the job done at a local shop north Dallas (lonestart 4x4) - $5,500 for the whole rig. I mean everything, including repainting all plastic pieces (no liner), trims, inside of doors, bumpers, and even the wheels.

It sounded steep to me, but they removed everything needed to do a good job (doors, door handles, lights, bumpers, ect)

I had it quoted in a couple of other places and going rate was about the same.

NOTE: these places don't use line-x. Most of them are using their own mix with Kevlar reinforcement

 

[Marine7]

To me $5000 don’t sound too bad if they are stripping the monstaliner off, and respraying another product.

 

[baldilocks]

The monstaliner is 5 years old and peeling off easily now.

I hope this was due to the Florida sun because mine is coming on two years old and I had no intentions of addressing the “paint” on a full body scale again.

 

[BILT4ME]

The monstaliner is 5 years old and peeling off easily now.

That sounds to me like a poorly prepped surface, not a product failure.

Peel it all, DA the entire truck, then re-monstaline. Can be done for about $500 I think based on other costs of material posted, but this is doing it yourself, not by another company.

 

[jsmo]

Agree with it being poor prep. Monstalinered my roof three years ago, spent ages on prepping, holding up super crazy.

 

[LINUS]

Yes, it had UV protectant and was supposed to be UV stable. This was about 5-6 years ago. It looks pretty terrible now. And if you read the fine print on the Line-X warranty it only applies to truck beds.

This was pretty much how my conversation went ~2yrs ago when I visited the Rhino shop up in another town.

I had a very frank conversation with the owner who was the ex of the person I learned / trained under 2 decades ago.
We were very friendly back forever ago & was just dead honest with where the current state of the products & what all had changed since the last I was in the suit & shot liner.

Colormatching was a complete afterthought to all the urethane liners, but the more “premium” liners really are meant to be used for chemical protection, not look pretty in the long term.

We hired the Line-X guy to spray a containment area in the refinery & the engineers knew I’d shot liner & so we made a deal to do all the prep & as long as it was approved by the Line-X guy we got the warranty.
That area sees very low Ph all the time, and is where carbon powder dropped out of process & was collected with a Bobcat with a bucket that has rubber strips/padding on the bucket.
It works perfect for that, but the color of the liner is more dark primer than black. Despite being the premium liner, it oxidized under the use. But it has held up even to as much tire scrub as the Bobcat gives it.

The “Premium” lines have harder durometer urethane, and less flex agent - that was the main thing. It’s like the difference between autobody paint & epoxy coatings from what I know of those.

HTH.

 

[musthave]

I wouldn’t trust any brand to stay colormatched to your paint over time.

But that’s me.

And the only comercial one using a real colormatching is Bullet - but I don’t know enough about them yet. I do know all the others are using essentially the same formulation save Rhino has a softer urethane so it feels a little softer & isn’t as glossy as Line-X.

If you’re shooting the entire vehicle then I can sorta get onboard, but it might fade a funky hue - but if you say tried to match a Sage 40th AE (just for example) - I bet in 5 yrs you’d regret what it looks like.

I’ve seen faded burgundy & it was a nearly a pink bed in a burgundy Ford pickup. It was horrid & I’d have re-shot the bed black.

Sounds like you know a lot about the process. I'm leaning towards the Bullet liner. Do you know if it goes on as thick as the Line X?

 

[LINUS]

Sounds like you know a lot about the process. I'm leaning towards the Bullet liner. Do you know if it goes on as thick as the Line X?

Bullet is a new player & the only samples I’ve had in hand were from a mini-tile board like most liner shops have to show product.

I’m not yet sure on their stuff, but if I can be convinced then I’ll come onboard with my friend & be able to field questions on their product.

I do know the spray liner industry so if these guys can convince me, then it’ll be real deal stuff that I’ll state any shortcomings - I’m jaded in general to them all so I’m pretty much the toughest to sell to & hate bull$hitters who just are salesmen.

I speak it plain so if I do come on to Bullet, it’ll be me saying in plain terms what you can expect from your $$$/investment. We all work for our $$$.

That said, I’m still jaded to color liners ATM.