Ever since we purchased our van we’ve thought about painting it. Being an old FedEx van the paint was not in great condition with lots of little dings and chips leading to some rust so we knew we’d paint it someday, but weren’t sure whether to try and do it ourselves or not and whether to change colors or just keep the white. Well, last month we decided the time had come to deal with the paint and knew it was going to be crazy expensive to have it done by a paint shop, so decided to do it ourselves. Then we decided that if we were going to go through all the effort of painting it ourselves, we wanted to change the color as we’ve always dreamed of having it be something bright and cheerful. We settled on orange and were planning to do a regular auto gloss paint, but after thinking about how much work it would be to do the kind of prep needed to get a good finish with a gloss paint, we started looking at other options and came across entire vehicles painted with bed liner. If you’re not familiar with bed liner, it was created for coating the insides of truck beds, is very scratch/chip resistant, and sprays on with a raised texture. Because of the texture and matte finish, you don’t have to do as much prep work, so after looking at a ton of photos and watching numerous videos, we decided to give it a try! There are a lot of brands that make bed liner, but people felt that the U-POL Raptor Liner had a little shinier less matte finish than some of the other brands, so that’s what we decided to go with.

Supplies Used

Twenty four 1 liter bottles of U-POL Raptor Tintable Bed Liner
One 10X20 foot plastic drop cloth to drive the van onto for overspray
Three rolls of 9x12 foot plastic for covering various things like the tires
Two rolls of masking tape
One roll of plastic with masking tape pre-attached that we used to cover the windshield
One roll of paper with masking tape pre-attached that we used for covering the windows
One roll of painting paper for covering things and for wadding up in holes we didn’t want to get paint in
One putty knife we used to help tuck masking tape under seals etc during the taping process
Two electric random orbit sanders, one with a 5” diameter and the other with a 6” diameter
Eight sanding pads for the 5” sander and five sanding pads for the 6” sander (we bought a lot more then that but found we didn’t go through them as quick as we expected, especially since we kept cleaning the pads throughout the sanding process)
Sanding block for hand sanding
Ten sand paper squares for the sanding block
Wire bristle drill attachment for removing thick, difficult rust from around the windshield
POR-15 for painting over rusted areas
POR-15 high build primer to apply over the POR-15 rust paint to help the bed liner stick better
One and a half cans of U-POL Raptor Adhesion Promotor spray for areas with heavy use/that were difficult to sand thoroughly

The Process

Step 1 - Fix Dents & Dings

We had someone back into us a few years ago and make a big dent under one of the tail lights that we never got around to fixing. We started the pre-painting process by filling it with a Bondo fiber glass filler, sanding that back, and then covering it again with Bondo body filler to get a smooth finish.

Step 2 - Deal With Rust

Unfortunately, the seal around our windshield is very old and started to leak causing some major rust, so we wanted to remove all of that before we painted. We ended up using a wire brush, a wire sanding drill attachment, and some regular sandpaper to get all the rust sanded back around the windshield. We also had some little rust spots scattered around the van where the paint had chipped so we sanded those back too with just some regular sandpaper as the rust wasn’t as heavy. After sanding everything back, we treated the spots around the windshield with POR-15 rust preventative paint that was recommended to us by an auto body shop. On the container it says you can paint it directly onto rust but it still seemed like a good idea to sand it back. The POR-15 is pretty glossy so after it dried we painted over it with some POR-15 high build primer so hopefully help the bed liner stick a little better.

Step 3 - Pull Everything You Can

In order to sand really well and avoid visible lines when painting (if you’re going to be switching colors - if you’re just re-painting the same color this step doesn’t matter as much) it’s best to pull as much off your van as possible. We ended up removing all the reflectors, lettering, tail lights (we removed one headlight but, front and back bumpers, mud flaps, fender flares, and door handles. Even though it took some time, we’re so glad we made the effort because the paint really looks crisp and beautiful around everything we pulled versus the two little lights on the front side of the van below the mirrors that we couldn’t pull and had to tape around. Even if you tape super great you can see the other color back under the edges and end up having to do some hand painting. Obviously, if we had just painted our van white again that wouldn’t have mattered.

Step 4 - Sanding

Sanding was a huge job, especially since our year of Sprinter has so many little rails and grooves that require hand sanding. We purchased two orbital sanders so we could sand at the same time and hopefully speed things up. We didn’t sand down to metal, just sanded off all the gloss so there was a nice textured surface for the Raptor liner to stick to. If you’re using a traditional smooth paint with gloss it’s really important to sand everything super smooth, so going over everything with a fine sandpaper after the initial coarse sanding. Fortunately, since Raptor Bed Liner is textured we read that you don’t have to do the second fine sanding, so we just sanded everything once with coarse 80 grit sandpaper. After getting everything we could sanded back with the orbital sanders we did a bunch of hand sanding with sandpaper sheets and a sanding block, though I found that it was usually better to just use the sheets without the block because that allowed me to roll and bend it to the right shapes to fit in all those crazy grooves and rails.

Step 5 - Wash Van

After we finished sanding, we took the van to a car wash and scrubbed the whole thing down with soap to give the Raptor Liner the best chance of sticking. Paint generally doesn’t stick very good to dirt and grease to having a clean surface before you paint is important. We decided to Plasti Dip our bumpers and flares so we brought them along to the car wash and sprayed them down too.

Step 6 - Drape & Tape

Getting everything covered and taped took a lot of time as well. We had to tape around the few things we couldn’t pull like the sliding door track, door seals, and all the edges of the windows and windshield so there would be nice clean lines. After that we covered the windows with various painting paper and plastic, wrapped the tires with plastic drop cloths, and draped everything behind the front bumper/the headlights with a big plastic drop cloth. Last but not least, we stuffed paper into all the holes left by the stuff we pulled so we wouldn’t get paint inside jamming up the mechanisms, connections, etc (like the mechanisms for the door handles).

Step 7 - Apply Adhesion Promoter

As an extra precaution, we sprayed U-POL Raptor Adhesion Promotor on all the areas that were hard to sand super well and on areas that are at a higher risk for chipping and peeling like edges of doors. The instructions say to apply two coats and we applied it pretty liberally to a lot of places on the van and even sprayed the entire roof since the whole thing was covered in rails and was super hard to sand. All of that took one and a half cans so it goes pretty far.

Step 8 - Tint Bed Liner Product

We used U-POL Raptor Tintable Spray-On Bed Liner that can be tinted with solvent based paint (water based paint is not compatible). U-POL sells tint for their bed liner products, but they didn’t have much color selection so we decided to get the tint from an auto paint shop. We ended up going to a Sherwin Williams automotive paint store and selecting an orange from their color book. U-POL recommends that if you get the tint mixed up somewhere, you ask for the binders to be left out for maximum pigment strength so that’s what we had them do. In their tinting instructions, U-POL states that you can add a maximum of 10% of the volume in tint to the Raptor Bed Liner when coloring it. The kits we purchased had 1 liter bottles of Raptor Liner that contained 711 mL of paint (the bottles aren’t filled to the top so there is room to add the hardener) in each one, so adding 10% volume in tint would mean adding 71 mL of tint to each bottle. Measuring out 71 mL is obviously kind of crazy, so we started by adding 70 mL. We didn’t have a measuring container that allowed us to accurately measure out that small of a volume, so we ended up using a measuring cup and teaspoons. We really wanted to be very accurate with the tint since we were mixing one bottle at a time so that the color would be exactly the same between each bottle so the van wouldn’t end up looking like a patchwork quilt! However, after mixing just two bottles it became clear that measuring in the two teaspoons required to make 70 mL was just crazy and was too difficult for one person to do on their own (I mixed bottles while Justin was spraying so when one bottle was done another was ready for him) and so we nixed that and just added 60 mL of tint (half a cup) to each bottle and honestly couldn’t tell a difference in color between the two bottles we mixed with 70 mL of tint. If you want to learn the details of how to mix up tintable Raptor Liner, this video from U-POL was really helpful and we also go through the steps in our video at the start of the article.

Step 9 - Paint

We used the spray gun that came in the Raptor Liner kit with a moderate sized air compressor and didn’t have any issues. After mixing the first bottle of paint, we did some practice spraying on a piece of scrap metal at different PSI settings and distances (both factors effect the texture) to figure out what look we liked best. We were interested in a finer overall texture so ended up settling on spraying at 80 PSI (higher then Raptor Liner states in their directions but produced a finer texture) at a distance of approximately two feet. After figuring that out, Justin started by spraying the roof to get a better feel for things on a surface that isn’t as visible in case something went wrong. On their website, Raptor Liner recommends spraying 2-3 coats, so we started with a very light coat all the way around and then added another two coats on most areas. Justin cleaned out the spray gun with acetone between each bottle of paint (just put a little acetone in a cup that he stuck the end of the spray gun in and then sprayed it through the gun onto some scrap material until the acetone came out clear) since it’s pretty thick gunky stuff and we were worried it was going to start drying in the spray gun and we were going to get thick chunks of paint coming out that would mess up the texture.

If you put on thin coats to keep a finer texture, it looks very patchy at first so don’t panic!

We wished we’d painted over the areas we sanded down to metal (to get rid of rust) with white primer before painting it with the bed liner because as you can see, those spots really stood out and were hard to cover

Step 10 - Touch Ups

Because Raptor Liner is textured, it doesn’t work out so well to go over a tricky area multiple times (for example spraying an area a bunch of times at different angles to get into various crevices) because it changes the look of the texture which makes that area stand out and look patchy. As such, we found that we needed to do some hand touch ups with a fine paint brush in little hard to reach crevices once the main paint had dried. We did some of it before we pulled the tape and then had to do a little more after removing the tape as the stickier “normal” painting tape pulled up some of the paint around the back door seals and the side window as we removed it.

Touch ups along the track for the sliding door before pulling the tape

Step 11 - Enjoy Your Newly Painted Van

Things We Learned

A 10x20 foot painting drop cloth is not big enough for a 158WB Sprinter van. We got it to drive onto for overspray, but it was off the back of the cloth by a few feet unless we drove it right to the edge of the plastic at the front, which we didn’t want to do because like I said, we got it to protect the ground from overspray. We ended up just laying down some of the plastic from the 9x12 foot rolls at the back of the van and even though it was thinner then the proper drop cloth, it worked fine. If we had a do-over though we’d get a bigger drop cloth.
We bought one roll of regular masking tape and then got a second roll of more expensive “sharp lines painters tape” masking tape for really visible areas like the windows as it sounded like it would make nicer lines when removed. We did a bunch of taping with both and a few hours later noticed that a lot of the sharp lines masking tape was peeling up while the cheap masking tape was all still nicely in place. We were a bit frustrated by that as we had to run around and stick it all back down right before we painted, but when it came time to remove the tape after the paint had dried, it became clear that not sticking as hard was actually the benefit of the sharp lines tape as it peeled off effortlessly without removing any of the paint, while the regular masking tape was hard to get up in places and pulled off some paint here and there. So, we learned that you have to decide whether you want to deal with sticking back down the fancy masking tape that peels up or deal with regular tape that sticks good but can be hard to remove at the end and might pull up some paint.
Periodically brushing off your orbital sanding pads with a little hand broom while you’re sanding is an easy way to clean them so you can get more use out of them. The instructions on the sanding pads says to wash them to clean them and get more use out of them, but we simply couldn’t be bothered and feel like we got pretty good use out of each once since we only used 13 orbital sanding pads total!
We thought having a bigger 6” orbital sander would be nice for the larger sections of the van, but the 5” sander was definitely more versatile and easier to manipulate for sanding rails, curves etc so we ended up using it a more than the other one. If we had a do-over, we would just get two 5” orbital sanders.
Our 6” sander was a nice fairly expensive Porter-Cable model and we were a bit sad when almost every orbital sander was sold out in the town where we painted the van and we had to get a $30 Black & Decker model for our second sander. However, it actually worked great the whole time and we couldn’t tell any differences in sanding quality compared to the significantly more expensive Porter-Cable sander. If you only need a sander for your van paint project and aren’t concerned about it needing major longevity, this seems to be an area where you could save some money.
The employee who mixed the tint for us at the Sherwin Williams auto paint shop insisted we had to get a much larger quantity than we’d calculated since the binders were being withheld. She said the binders make up a big volume of the tint so we had to buy more of the tint to still get the correct volume we needed. We agreed with that but when we did the math we felt that the volume of tint she said we needed was wrong. We questioned her about it but she remained insistent on her calculations and since she was the paint mixing expert, we ended up agreeing to it but were pretty shocked by the price ($590!). Well, we ended up being right and she gave us way more tint then we needed for the sixteen bottles of Raptor Liner we were trying to tint. We were pretty bitter at first, but little did we know that we’d need another eight bottles of Raptor Liner to finish the job, so when all was said and done, we had some tint left over but not tons, so we’re a little less bitter. Still feel like we got ripped off on the price though so we’d recommend getting quotes from a number of auto paint shops when selecting tint. We had actually called another shop and Sherwin Williams gave us a lower quote, but we didn’t realize she wasn’t quoting us the price of a pint of tint without the binder, which was why it ended up costing so much more than we expected. As such, make sure and let whoever you call know that you’d like a quote for X volume of tint without the binders so you don’t get a shock like us!
We sanded some areas down to bare metal to get rid of rust spots and wished we’d painted over them with white primer before spraying the bed liner as they showed up as dark spots that required way more coats of paint to cover then we expected. Like we’d spray over a section and everything would look great except for a dark spot where the metal was still showing through a bit and then we’d have to go over the whole section with another coat or really spray it on thick to the area over the bare metal, which changes the look of the texture in that spot making it stand out in a different way (more on that next). We had the same issue with the areas around the windshield we painted with POR-15, because we foolishly painted over the POR-15 with a dark gray primer that also required a very thick coat of bed liner to cover.
If you blast the bed liner heavier in one area than another (for instance trying to cover something like the dark primer and bare metal spots I described above) it ends up with a different lumpier texture and an odd sheen that stands out in certain lighting giving the paint job a patchy appearance. As such, we found that it’s best to just keep layering on thin even coats even if you have to do a bunch to cover something. That said, we did find we could mostly fix those shiny lumpy areas where we blasted on a thicker layer of bed liner by misting those spots with a nice light even coat from a distance to basically add back the fine texture over the top of those areas. Doing that made them blend in a lot better, but in certain light we still have some areas that stand out a bit due to a different sheen/texture.
Even though the tint was very concentrated, it still created a lighter shade when mixed with the Raptor Liner since it’s a light grayish white color. After we finished painting the van we painted some tint straight onto a little spot to see if we could tell a difference in color and the tint was obviously darker and part of the reason why our van turned out more of a construction cone orange than the burnt orange we were imagining! As such, expect whatever color you choose to actually be a little lighter when all is said and done.

Questions? Thoughts? Tips from your own DIY painting experience? Leave us a comment!

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