Ok... I'm getting my car ready to sell, but there is one issue that has bugged me and now i'm not sure the right way to proceed...

Last year my car was stripped and repainted. AWESOME paintjob... Only problem was i couldn't afford to do the bed. At the time, I knew i had a tonneau covering it up, and i planned to just do a spray in liner and forget about it.

Now that i'm looking to sell, i'm not sure what i should do with it.

Currently the bed is painted the old ugly orange color, with a couple small sections having flaked off showing the original green color underneath. There is no rust- and its only a little beat up.

I am not in a position to sand down the bed and repaint it properly, which of course would be the ideal... That leaves me with couple of options...

1. Leave it alone, let the next owner decide what to do (finish it or spray liner it)
2. Put in a spray liner
3. Scuff it and spray it the color of the car, but don't do much/any finish work to get it shiny- basically just get it to be the same color the car is now.

If you were looking at buying a car like this... Which would you prefer.
*** Don't just say you would finish it "properly" as that isn't an option.

I am assuming the bed is beat up like all the rest of them are. There will be a ton of body work involved making it look good with paint. If that is the case I would use a spray in bedliner. To me painting over the dinged up the bed will will make it look worse. The spray in liner will hide it.

I'd go with #3. Its cheaper, makes it look better and will allow the new owner to decide which way they want it.

With out the bed finished will hurt the value, But I think #3 is the least.
With your first option, The new owner will need to finish it right away.
With option two, Only a small number of potential buyers may like it, The others will only be thinking about the cost of fixing it.
With option three, It may not be perfect but at least it is presentable and won't need to be addressed immediately.

I'd either leave it alone or paint it the same color as the car. The last thing I would do is some sort of liner. Anyone looking at the car would have no options. That liner looks lousy, and will never come off easily, if someone wants to make it right.
If I was looking at an Elky, and it had that crap in the bed, I'd pass.

If I can throw another option in the bucket... I just did this to my Sprint and it turned out looking very nice on a pretty dented up bed. Roll on bed liner! The stuff I used is called Herculiner from GiJoes and it looks really nice and the best part is it was only $85 to line the bed with 3 coats of liner. Make sure all rust is killed and scuff the poo out of it, clean and it's ready to roll!

I'm with Bill. On an ElCamino, I would not want to deal with bedliner. Leave the cover on and tell the prospective buyer the bed needs to be refinished. That way if they want the cheap coverup bedliner fine. But if the truck is nice enough overall, I would personally prefer to sand it out correctly and repaint.

No bedliner liner looks good in an elky. Leave it alone or paint it.

I think I would scuff and paint it black. Black would match the paint scheme of the car and allow the buyer to finish any way they want without the orange being a huge contrast in color. Who knows what the next owner might want to do, '68 SS elcamino's are not too easy to come by and they might want to make it appear stock some day and a bed liner would suck to sand off and re paint.

Thanks for all the comments guys... I really appreciate it.

I think i'm going to do a combination- I'm going to scuff the orange, and rattle can it a dark gray primer... As it will look better than the orange it currently is, but still easy enough to remove later if they want to finish the bed right. No point in spending good money on real paint for the bed if i'm not going to the trouble of sanding it all down, and then finish sanding once its painted...

With your first option, The new owner will need to finish it right away.

With option three, It may not be perfect but at least it is presentable and won't need to be addressed immediately.

I disagree...

Unless the car is 100% done otherwise, there's no reason for someone to need to finish it right away (unless they are anal, in which case, any other flaws will likely deter them)...

While the ugly Orange and flaking paint may look bad, as a buyer, I'd be more leary of "fresh" primer or fresh paint (I'd be thinking, "what's it hiding?" )... And either leaving it alone of primering it, its still going to be the same amount of work for the new owner to fix it...

IMO, leave it alone...

I disagree...

Unless the car is 100% done otherwise, there's no reason for someone to need to finish it right away (unless they are anal, in which case, any other flaws will likely deter them)...

While the ugly Orange and flaking paint may look bad, as a buyer, I'd be more leary of "fresh" primer or fresh paint (I'd be thinking, "what's it hiding?" )... And either leaving it alone of primering it, its still going to be the same amount of work for the new owner to fix it...

IMO, leave it alone...

Take some pics before you primer the area...that way you can show what you were "hiding"....

Id leave it alone and let the next guy handle it. Personaly for anything less than a show car I'm a fan of a GOOD pro done spray in bedliner. I think they look nice and you can still have some use of the bed, but its not for everyone which is why i say let it be. .

Consider wood.

Just leave it, let the new owner do what they want.

Leaving it alone is like saying "Go ahead and beat down my price"

Leaving it alone is like saying "Go ahead and beat down my price"

I have to agree here... I'm really kind of damned if i do, and damned if i don't here... So just trying to figure out the least crappy way to do it...

Now i'm thinking about just rattlecan it semi-flat black.

It will cover up the orange (I have hunreds of pics of the bodywork process showing that it was all done right) and should be obvious that I'm not trying to "hide" anything... my statement to buyers will be absolutly true- I didn't have enough money when the rest of the car was stripped to have the bed redone & painted as well... I was going to rhino line it, but never got around to it...

The car has an awesome craftec tonneau cover over the bed, so they won't even have to look at it unless they have it up... and then semi-gloss black will look a heck of a lot better than the orange.

If they want to strip it down and finish the bed- its not any harder than it would have been when it was orange, or it they want to rhino line it- they can do that too.

Hopefully i won't get beaten up AS BAD as if i had just left it orange.

Just remember to properly protect the rest of the car from overspray.

I agree with Scott. Number 3 looks best while keeping all options open for the new buyer.

Leave it.

Leaving it alone is like saying "Go ahead and beat down my price"

I agree. If you don't like the idea of the bed liner, (which is not as hard to strip as people say) then at least sand it and paint it black or something. If I was buying a rig and saw the bed all flaky and rusty I'd be thinking about the work needed to protect it from further damage.

Just paint it and call it a day!

Personally, I never liked the look of a bed that is painted the same color as the car. But that's just me, I like the contrast of a black spray-liner. Also, as was already stated, the bed has to be perfect to pull it off, and that means crippling the usefulness of having an El Camino, IMO. Maybe I'm just jealous that my bed's not perfect tho. Where is this car going to be listed for sale?

If I was buying a rig and saw the bed all flaky and rusty I'd be thinking about the work needed to protect it from further damage.


THE BED IS NOT FLAKY AND RUSTY!!!

Let me be very clear- as a few of you keep mentioning i need to not "hide it" by painting over it....

The bed is not rusty- AT ALL. NO RUST. It is not even really that beat up- it just has a really terrible paintjob on it that had no prepwork done before it was sprayed, and so some chunks of the paint have come up showing the original green paint below.

The whole car was like that, and was stripped down to eliminate it.... So by me "painting this" is not hiding any defects from a buyer- they will see that it still needs to be stripped... and i will explain to them why its not painted nice like the rest of the car. It is simply to make it asthetically better looking than opening the tonneau cover up and showing a bright orange bed.

Personally, I never liked the look of a bed that is painted the same color as the car. But that's just me, I like the contrast of a black spray-liner. Also, as was already stated, the bed has to be perfect to pull it off, and that means crippling the usefulness of having an El Camino, IMO. Maybe I'm just jealous that my bed's not perfect tho. Where is this car going to be listed for sale?

It will be on this site, craigslist, autotrader, and eventually probably e-bay.

I have some things to finish up on the car before I start serious advertising, and i need to educate myself on how to deal with a sale involving this much money.... I've never sold a car worth this much before and don't know all the catches with taking Cashiers checks and waiting for them to clear, or if i need to just insist on them wiring money direct to my account.

Mattress

If I was looking at buying it (and I am looking for one), I would at least want the inside of the bed painted the same color as the car. Since it would be matching color paint and has a cover, I would really have to get motivated to want to perfect it later.

i'd leave it..
unless you're gonna do it right..
otherwise whatever you do, will let the buyer beat you down on the price...

just tell the buyer you saw no need to paint the bed, as it's covered, and you wanted to still be able to use it, without worrin' about f'n up the new paint..