Random (really really dumb) bed liner question

[16989473]

I know it won't look pretty, and there will be extra weight in the front; however would putting bed liner on the nose of a bus, the lower side skirts and the dog legs be a bad idea? I know bed liner isn't intended to be used as a coding for the sides of a vehicle but I was wondering if it would actually add some structural integrity to the front and weather resistance to a bus that would be in thesalt belt region. This is purely hypothetical but I have been tossing the idea around of putting liner on the front of my boss and now I'm starting to wonder if I should put it on the lower skirts as well. Would this add any sort of major instability or safety risks to the vehicle?
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1976 adventurewagen high top "battlewagen"

[vwjetboat]

stop calling it bed liner and call it rock guard...
and if done right ... it will look nice..

[16989473]

Oh, okay lineX rock guard sounds wierd though, but i get what you are saying
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1976 adventurewagen high top "battlewagen"

[vwjetboat]

and you are looking a only a few pounds of weight.. so no it will not effect anything..

[busdaddy]

When gravel guard first came out in the early 80's it was quickly embraced by hack bodyshops everywhere, now you could do a cave and pave on the lower 8" of any rusted turd, finish it in 40 grit and spooge on a coat to make it look "just like the modern cars", it was like money in a can and the customer thought you were doing them a favor.
Sadly it's been abused so much that any time I see a pre 1981 car with textured rockers now I expect the worse, there's some rustbucket buses around here that have it almost as high as the door handles, you just know that it's not there to improve paint durabilty in those cases.

It's your bus, but what you propose will make it look cheap, bedliner is also hard to get off if you change your mind. I'd also be scared of it hiding a creeping chip where it's rotting out under the paint. The reason all the offroad guys say it's great is because it camoflages all the dings and shitty body work easily making any hack an instant bodyman. Save it for your Jeep.
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[skills@eurocarsplus]

^^^

my thoughts exactly. but I have used it in the wheel wells of my rabbit truck, as that had some hateful poopy nasty shit brushed in there.

holding up very well. and I used it because doing that nasty brush on goop VW used on the MK1 platform was just out of the question to me.

personally, I would never buy a car/truck with that stuff sprayed on. it is sheer hell to remove....even sand blasting it won't take it off. extreme heat and a scraper is the only way to remove it.
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[lil-jinx]

Myth Busters did a bit,coated a car with rhino liner.
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https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=620186
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=668799
1974 Bay Westfalia. she likes to be called Ethel.
1968 Dune Buggy
1974 parts bus
A smart man learns from his mistakes,a very smart man learns from other's mistakes.

[vwjetboat]

[raygreenwood]

The 411 and 412 came with it from the factory on the rockers. It works and lasts very well. The stone guard has been around on european cars....the 411 for sure, Porsche 911 and 912 ans some Mercedes....since at least the mid 1960s.

It was techically the same product as the Wurth stone guard.

But.....its not bed liner. Totally different product. Thats a different deal....and "Could" have merit.
Actual bed liners range in composition from asphalt like....to polyethylenes to vinyls to alloys of anything in between.

Back in......mmmm....1999ish.....when my ACVW was my daily driver and I drove in a lot,of industrial districts.......I experimented with an old front clip with a coat of Meguiers mold relsase......and spraying commercially available bedliners on them and peeling them off.

The object was to make a removeable shell.....yes....like a bra....but not a bra. A two piece hard, conformal shell that can be snapped on for driving in really bad gravel areas.

The results came out pretty good on the test patches. I was testing a few products.....but other things came up and I never ended up making the whole part.

There have been a couple of companies here and there that have made similar products for certain vehicles.

Ray

[sixty9fasty]

Helped a buddy of mine did an entire splitty bus in rhino line. Two tone, black on bottom, blue on top. The black came out nice... the blue, like crap... it was a tintable, completely different from the black... went on horribly, came out horribly.