First of all I want to thank everybody for all the good advice you guy give out. Today my question is should I paint my roof top or spray bedliner. See my roof top has alot of little hole and I was advise to treat , fill with fiberglass , and spray bedliner but I like the stock look with vinyl . Can I spray a THIN bedliner and install vinyl over it. I just think if I spray thin bedliner it would protect it more but would the vinyl stick to the bedliner
I'm not a fan of the bedliner. What has to be done, is cut the rust out, and patch. If you just cover it, it's going to come back! The roof should be painted under the vinyl top, that's more than enough protection. No need to do the bedliner, then vinyl. I've seen a few cars that have had the roof patched, then had vinyl re-installed, and you can't tell.
You may be on to something here! Make sure all rust is treated, thinking a regular coating of bedliner and let it seaon for a bit. Lightly sand to smooth out roughness and vinyl it. Coat of sealer paint before vinyl may bea good idea too.
I've seen some that used...Line-X bedliner...sprayed on as a vinyle top...then put the trim back on... ...comes in different colors...
It has to many 1inch by 1inch hole to patch all of them (15 to 20). I will post some pics later today.
I guess it all depends on the car, are you doing it to last forever? Are you going to keep the car forever? Panel adhesive is pretty awesome stuff, grind out the rust, glue a patch on the underside, and finish with a good quality filler, prime and paint, then cover with vinyl, and it should last a long time. Have a look here: (they have some cool stuff) http://www.evercoat.com/
if you plan on keeping the car forever, i'd say spend the time right now and patch the holes, if your not the greatest with a welder. cut out the rust and weld a patch on the underside of the roof (hopefully there's no interior in your car) and use some good filler such as rage or something to even out the top, then as DDB said. prime, paint, vinyl and you will be on your way
The only think I would caution is that panel adhesive, if used in this application, I think would show thru. On my orange Grabber, they used this method to fix the holes from the factory vinyl top. After paint.....you could see the repair. I then had the body shop remove their repair, weld the holes as I originally requested, and repaint the entire car. I have also used panel adhesive to repair other cars. It works great on factory seams that you would normally weld, like where two panels meat under a window or around a door jamb. Any other seams....I would have welded. On your car in particular...sould like you need an entire roof. How is the rest of the car as far as rust? If this is a car that needs quarters, trunk, doors, etc....might need to find another car.
But if you were to put a vinyl top over the repairs, you'd be fine. Material has come a long way since your Orange car was painted
Rick Brooks has done the bedliner on his Comet, and it looks very close to the vinyl top, not exact, but real close. Maybe he could post some pics of it.
The rest of the car has almost no rust its only the roof top where it had vinyl. I think Im going to treat surface , fiberglass , and bedliner on top and bottom of roof top. Exactly like Ricks finish roof.
We tried to cover this in your other thread. Have you done anything to the rotten metal yet? If you have a 1" hole without doing a thing, as soon as you hit that metal with an angle grinder w/wire brush cup or an air sander with some 40/60 grit, you will open up a hole big enough to stick your fist into. Maybe even bigger. My general rule of thumb with rust holes is, what you can see is only about 20% of the real rust. If you leave any rust at all up there, it will come back and destroy your previous work. Let see some pictures ........... :deadhorse
I agree with Eric. :Handshake If you have a bunch of 1" holes now, just wait until you start grinding on it, the whole top may disappear! If the metal is that thin, you'd be better off to replace the whole top, or find another car. Fiberglass would be of no help if it's that far gone.....
