Steel Tray Paint Coatings. (WHAT TYPE?)

[Donk]

G'day. I have purchased a steel tray for my 2014 SR5 that has already previously been powder coated and gave a mate who can sand blast and under coat the tray for bugger all for me. I want to have the tray colour coated to suit my factory Toyota white. What type of paint do you blokes recommend that will be hard wearing as it will be used as a ute to cart timber and rocks etc? Powder coat, 2 pack or something else? I even considered hot dip galvanising it but I'm not sure if it would need to be under coated first?

[lyndon1706]

Following as I have some sliders to paint soon too.

[carjos]

We have a fleet of luxs with steel trays and cabinets for field service vehicles (ag mechanics) that I'm pretty sure are 2-pak and are holding up really well. They still get scratched but don't flake away at all

[Skrewdriver]

Hot dip galvanising is the way to go, but to the best of my knowledge it needs to be blasted before being galvanised. Last time I checked getting something hot dipped costs around $700 per tonne. The cost of what the weight, irrespective of what it is, and of course there is a minimum charge as most places, so if you’re smart, get a whole bunch of stuff done at once. You can always paint over the galvanising to make it match.

After that, you could try powder coating. Not sure about costs, but it is super tough. Again, blasting would be required.

Option three would be an addition to powder coating and that is Rhino Lining/Speed liner. I have this stuff in the back of my 2012 SR5 DC, and after three years and running pallets, bricks, rubble, crowbars, rakes and trying to scratch it, it doesn’t. When I had my SR5 done in the tub, it cost me $800. They just rough the paint up for adhesion and apply it.

If I was buying a Hilux today and I was putting a flat tray on it, I would be torn between an Aluminium tray with a piece of conveyor belt over it or a steel tray with LED lights and toolboxes underneath it. Only reason why I kept the steel tub more suited to our needs (hopefully that doesn’t sound too contradictory)

We run Triton’s at work with this setup, and the tray will never rust, and once every few months, we take the conveyor belting out and hose the tray out. I work at a gas company and we drag gas bottles, stillage’s and cages across it, lift the rubber matting, brand new.

Before you baulk at the aluminium tray idea, they are not the flimsy paper thin aluminium of days gone by, thick, strong sheeting is used on the decks these days. We run the belting because the Sales Rep’s don’t care.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Skrewdriver

[Jacko9]

Powder-coat your tray mate. We are on a farm, have a fleet of 10 utes normally that get turned over when they hit 200k normally. They all get a custom tray, with a nice powdercoat finish. I would suggest that the powder-coat job alone will cost around $400-$500, you need to factor in the sand blasting a well, but you already have the option of getting a mate to do that.

I would also suggest powdercoating the tray body itself "Aztec Silver" which is like a hammer tone black-grey mix. Why? when you scratch it or chip it or whatever, the difference is very hard to notice, unlike a straight white tray body. Then powdercoat the tray sides white. It is a nice contrast that is actually useful too.

[knoxy]

I've go KBS coatings on mine and its average, their diamond coating has cracked off where I use a ratchet strap, plus flaked off where timber slides across it on the headboard. Can't reccomend it. Used a rattle can epoxy on my sliders and just touch them up when they take a bearing, worked really well so far.