Painting the inside and bottom of box - questions

[Mattchu60]

Getting close to done with body work and about ready to paint my pickup box.

Anyone know a good way to paint a box? Its all assembled and not coming apart at this point. I'm going to seam seal the gaps before I paint also. The inside of the box I am going to use a single stage paint. Thought about standing it up on the end to paint, or maybe leaning over the sides to paint the inside, or possibly throwing a dropcloth down and crawling on the bed floor and working my way back to the rear. Seems like there is no "good" way to reach all the areas.

Also I was going to paint the bottom, but not sure if factory just painted the bottom black or if they were painted the color of the rest of the truck.

Lastly - what are people doing for inside the wheel wells? Paint them black, or paint them the body color?

[mongocanfly]

I've got mine on a rotisserie...so I can get to every nook and cranny...other wise I'd stand it on end...you'll probably want more than a single coat so crawling on the bed floor is not gonna happen to do a 2nd coat...on the underside of my bed I just sprayed lizardskin on top of the epoxy primer I sprayed...same on wheel wells...

[72HuggerK20]

Depends how "correct" or "show" your truck is going to be, but myself, I'd much rather have the underside and wheel wells done with black undercoating than paint. It's your truck, you get to decide how you want to do it. It's not up to anybody else to decide if what you did is right, unless that's your goal.

The benefits of undercoating the wheel wells would be that if a rock hits it from underneath, there's less of a possibility of it cracking the paint on the inside of the box. Also, sound deadening is a plus, but not really necessary on a pickup box.

Of course, epoxy primer under any sort of coating you put on that pickup box would be a good idea.

I personally did the entire underside of my cab, box, front and rear wheel wells, and the inside of the box with U-Pol Raptor Liner. It has held up pretty well to rock chips, and only has a few scratches that can be touched up pretty easily in the box. My box does have a steel plate floor that was welded in over top of the original wood floor, and I was not in the mood to mess around cutting that out.

Also, I lifted the box and cab up with a forklift to spray underneath them, and crawled in the box and worked front to back to paint the inside. Not sure what kind of equipment you have, but that worked for me.

Basically, do whatever you want and let the nay-sayers complain. Again, who cares, it's your truck, do what you think looks good and will hold up to the way you plan to use it.

[Mattchu60]

I've thought about using undercoating for the bottom of the box. Is there a good brand that works well? I know very little about undercoating - never used it before. Do you usually use the spray cans? I assume those are "cheaper" quality - I want something that will last for like 20-30 years.

I do have the whole thing in epoxy already - including the bottom of the box.

[mongocanfly]

Old57 used linerextreme on his..it looks great..comes with spray gun in a kit...there's lots of other brands ...I used lizard skin on mine..