Spray in bedliner, Factory or aftermarket?
 

Going to order a new F-150 this spring or summer. I see they offer a spray-in bedliner for $595 from the factory. Anyone familiar with this? Is it durable and worth the money, or would an aftermarket spray in bedliner be a better option?
I appreciate all information and suggestions. Thanks.

Get a quote from your local Line-X dealer, if you have one.

Line-X is nicer.

I have one truck with factory spray in liner and another with the factory drop in liner. I favor the drop in liner because it's much easier to get packages/boxes/large items in and out. The spray in liner allows nothing to slide without consequences akin to sliding items over a very, very coarse sanding board.

Factory bedliner:
3-year 36K warranty.
Auto dealership can't fix problems if the problem is larger than a dime.
Aromatic (will fade over time if exposed to UV light from the sun).
Black only.
Peels off very easily.

Aftermarket (LINE-X for example):
Lifetime warranty against cracking, bubbling, flaking.
Any dealer can fix any problem.
Aromatic and aliphatic (no fading) bedliners are available.
Black or color matching.
Significantly higher adhesion.

My F-150 has Line-X. A dozen years later, and it is still like new. Your mileage may vary.

I've had Rhino LIning on my last two trucks. It lasted 11 years on one and 7 on the other. The stuff seems indestructible and I did zero maintenance to preserve it. I'm curious if any of you think there is any difference between Rhino Lining and Line X.

According the technical data sheets, yes, they are different. Here are the tear strengths (psi) of the more popular bedliner products:

Standard LINE-X (will fade) - 435
LINE-X Premium (fade resistant) 435
LINE-X Platinum (fade resistant) - 708
Rhino Tuff Grip (will fade) - 225
Rhino Hardline (will fade) - 225
Rhino Extreme 21-50 (will fade) - 365

Follow up from OP. I decided to go with the standard line-X as the quote I received was for $500 making it $95 cheaper than the one from the factory. I had Rhino lining on my last truck and it held up very well over the last 22 years (I did have a topper) but there are no longer any dealers in my area.

I have the factory drop in liner and it hasn't faded even in the hot Florida sun. My truck was delivered in Sept 2009.

I actually USE my truck and I don't like the rough sharp finish on the spray on liners. They're too rough to crawl on when you need to get into the truck bed and they're too rough to slide heavy items on. The pockets in the factory drop in liner do come in handy too.

Maybe Florida is unique but I've seen hundreds of trucks and jeeps with spray on bed liner where corrosion as started under the liner and completely eaten the metal away and left only a thin sheet of liner. Spray on liners seem to trap the moisture and allow it to destroy the metal instead of drying out properly. The problem is so common in Florida that when I look at any used vehicle if it has spray on liner, I instantly reject it.

Spray bedliner products do NOT trap moisture. The coating protects the metal. Keep in mind that these polyurethane/polyuurea products are used to line water towers! Rust is an electrical event. Salt in the air lands on the metal on the back side where there's no bedliner product and serves and an electrolyte. Rust works its way through to the side of the bedliner. This is very common in salt rich air regions such as Florida.

A coating applied to the surface prevents electrolytes and thus there's no electrical event and no rust.

That being said, drop-in plastic bedliners DO trap moisture and debris between the metal and the bedliner. Take your plastic bedliner out and see what you find!

Idaho
 

Same estimate I got from Line-x for a 6.5' bed. Premium was $625. Platinum = $700.

This is in Boise.

Have you ever even looked at a drop in bed liner? The bed is the same shape that it always was so unless your truck bed trapped water when it came out of the factory, it's not going to trap water with a bed liner installed. Also both of the bed liners that I've had wrap over top of the side wall and down about 1/2" on the outside so normally water doesn't get under the bed liner. And if it does it will drain out. Just like it was designed to do.

I took the drop in bed liner out of my 1985 Nissan truck after owning it for 16 years and the inside of the bad was fine with absolutely no sign of corrosion. The only thing that I noticed was the the paint was worn in spots where liner rubbed on it. A friend of mine owned the truck up until about 3 years ago and the bed in it was still solid.

Your first paragraph is a long winded way of saying that metal rusts out from the back side. True, sometimes. But water also creeps in between the bed liner and the metal and then expands and splits the two apart and that traps water that rusts the metal. I can see the difference between metal that has rusted from the back side and metal that has rusted from the front. I can also tell when bed liner is hanging in a sheet from the metal that it's supposed to be attached too. If the spray on liners actually bonded to the painted surface that they're claimed to then there probably wouldn't be a problem but they frequently don't.

I sure have seem them, we pull them out of trucks every single day. Drop-in bedliners are definitely not the same shape as the bed. As a matter of fact, you lose a lot of bed space because of this. Take yours out and see how much bigger your truck bed looks. Over the last 15 years, I've seen literally thousands of drop-in bedliners and here's what I think: Pros are that they are inexpensive and can take a beating. Cons are that they trap water and debris and vibrate, so they sometimes sand down the paint. If the drop-in goes over the bulkhead (behind the back window) then that part typically has to be cut off because it warps and bed covers won't fit properly in that area. If the drop-in goes over the bed rails, they warp there also and it just looks bad. Another con is that some of them fly out of truck beds. Durakon had a recall many years ago due to bedliners coming out of truck beds at high speeds. They also can't be repaired.

You said, "True, sometimes. But water also creeps in between the bed liner and the metal and then expands and splits the two apart and that traps water that rusts the metal." Professionally applied bedliner products that are applied by a professional do not have this problem under normal circumstances. However, the everyday Joe who goes to Walmart and buys a gallon of Herculiner and takes it home and rolls in his truck bed, well yes, all sorts of problems can occur and not just the ones you mentioned.

If you're happy with a drop-in bedliner, then that's great, but even the truck manufacturers realize that professional spray-on bedliners are superior and that's why Nissan, Ford, GM, Ram, and Toyota all offer factory spray-on bedliners and no, they don't have problems with water, rust, debris, or peeling.

I just sold my '05 F150 XLT SuperCrew and it had a spray-in PermaTech bedliner from the first week off the dealer's lot. I was really impressed at how well it held up. It was a little softer than LineX, I think, with a very slightly pebbled look. It was a bit grabby, but I liked that, as it helped things not slide around so much. (It wasn't ideal when trying to slide some heavier stuff, but even then, it wasn't too bad.) It withstood some pretty heavy use - not dropping engine blocks onto it or anything like that - and looked good for the whole 15 years I owned it. I just picked up a new F150 and I'm having the same stuff applied.

I never had a drop-in liner, but I could see those having advantages. For how I use my truck, though, spray-in liner is perfect.