Just ordered a Poison Spyder Brawler Lite front bumper. Question is, what is everyone having success with, as far as coatings?
I like women, so I don't need anything shiny or pretty to impress the mall crowd.
I want something with a slight texture and flat finish to protect it and give a fair amount of traction when I need to stand on it.
Let me know what you guys are using!!

 

Based on your description of what you are after, sounds like some sort of truck bed lining is in order, i.e. RhinoLining or the like.

 

I've used Rustoleum bed liner with good success. It only has a slight texture and makes for easy touch-ups.

 

Yeah I'm thinking some type of bed liner or sealant. I know some products are superior to others, but I have no experience with any of them.

 

The way I did my bumper:
Wash the bare metal with a scotch brite pad and rubbing alcohol
4 coats of Self Etching primer
4 coats of regular flat black paint on the inside of the bumper
4 coats of Duplicolor Truck Bed Coating

Bumper looks great 8 months later. Only suggestion would be to hit the d-ring tabs first/with extra bedliner. After a few winch pulls the coating is peeling.

 

I did the same process as BoraBora with equal success. Super easy, and looks great. Has held up through its first winter just fine so far.

 

I did the bedliner as well. It's been holding good for the last 2 years. I did rip the coating in the inside when I was installing it over the frame. I'm not sure it would hold if I was to do rock crawling and banging it on rocks. For the way I use it it's holding fine.

 

Since no coating will "hold" when you use the bumper to guide you onto a rock, I like the idea expressed on multiple replies above to use a final top coat of some form of spray on bed liner. You absolutely will need to touch up after hard wheeling. I'm not real picky, I have factory textured powder coat bumpers and touch up with Rustoleum (or similar) bed liner or VHT chassis spray. Basically, anything I have handy that is semi-gloss or flat black. If you look close, you can see the changes, but I really don't care. My bumpers serve the purpose well and get used for what steel bumpers were meant for. If I were doing a Jeep for my wife, I would haul them to a powder coater and get a nice textured finish. For my use, that's a waste of money. So just decide what you think you will do with/to them, and go from there. If you go the powder coat way, have them do 2 coats. Otherwise, you may develop rust spotting if you live in a snow/salt region.

 

I haven't done a bumper, but I had the bed of my Ram 2500 sprayed with LineX ten years ago and it is still in fine shape - and it has taken a beating hauling all sorts of stuff. I don't think I could remove it if I wanted to. The only downside is that you have to have it done by a dealer - no home kits.

 

I did u-pol raptor liner on my jcr bumpers - has held up great thus far; and has been easier to clean than the dupli-color bed liner I've used in the past (had a tough time getting the brown color out after run in's with mud).

Cleaned with SEM Solve, scuff/sand, cleaned again, two light coats of self etch primer, then one very light coat of raptor liner followed by two full coats.

You can get a lighter texture than I did by spraying at a higher PSI.