SEMA 2014: Rugged Exterior Coatings Being Introduced By Line-X

A growing trend that started a few years ago is to coat the exterior of your truck or jeep with a bedliner style coating. We have featured a few vehicles with this coating and have seen it on and off over the years. It is popular in areas with lots of brush and with restorers who don’t want to spend an arm and a leg restoring the exterior of their vehicle.

The issue with using a bedliner is that they are thick coatings. So, as the wet coating is being applied, a little thing called gravity starts to pull the coatings down. This means getting a good looking finish is difficult (not impossible). On top of that, most bedliners aren’t UV stable. So, after a couple of years, the vehicle’s appearance will start to fade.

On the other hand, it is hard to beat the durability a bedliner offers. You don’t have to worry about desert pin striping (paint scratches caused by trees), rock chips from mud, or scratches caused from washing the truck after playing in the mud. The bedliner will just need to be hosed off and it is fine.

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Line-X realizes all of these benefits and all of the challenges. So, they came up with a brand new exterior coating. The Ultra exterior coating is an extremely durable exterior coating that is designed to protect the body. It is UV stable so it won’t fade over time and by adding some pigment it can be sprayed in pretty much any color you want.

When it is sprayed, the coating is usually between 6 to 8 mils thick (1 mil = 0.001 inches). The coating is sprayed at high pressure and temperature just like Line-X’s bedliners are. The combination of thickness and how it is applied gives the coating a smooth and consistent look and greatly reduces the effects of gravity. So, at the hands of a good applier, the truck will look great.

The coating is extremely durable and it is made for the outdoor enthusiast — Kevin Heronimus

“The coating is extremely durable and it is made for the outdoor enthusiast,” says Kevin Heronimus CEO of Line-X.  They are seeing people coat not only their trucks and Jeeps, but off road vehicles. The coating is an extremely versatile product that can be used instead of paint. It is applied 3 to 4 times the thickness of paint but nowhere near as thick as a bedliner.  On really cool aspect of the Ultra is that it can be used on-top of a bedliner. This adds a little extra thickness but more than anything, it provides a UV stable finish to prevent fading.

The coating is still being rolled out to their dealer network. So, it isn’t available everywhere currently. About 30 franchises have the product now and by the end of the first quarter most of the dealers should have it.