Anyone ever painted a Softopper frame?

I am buying a used Softopper for my 05 DC, wondering about painting the bedrails and frame of it black before installing it. I have seen people rhinoline or spray paint the bedrails, what I'm wondering is about the frame itself that holds up the canvas.

Does anyone know if it is easy to take apart all of the hinges and the plastic pieces on it as well as the canvas? I can't tell from pictures or video and nothing came up searching the forum about this specifically. I appreciate any info.

 

I don’t believe I have seen any posts regarding painting frames of a softtopper. I’m sure it’s possible, just no one has done it from what I’ve seen on here.

The frame is on the inside so never even thought about it.

Post pics and process if you do.

 

I definitely plan to do the bed rails black and figured if it was easy to deconstruct that I might do the frame while I'm at it. I think it would look better in the truck black when I had it folded down toward the cab. If I go through with it I'll take pictures.

 

Just following up here. A friend of mine owns a shop and powdercoated my Softopper frame for 50 bucks. In retrospect I'm really happy with how it turned out, probably would not have done it though if I had to pay full price as it would have been expensive.

It was pretty straight forward, I had to disassemble the topper into individual metal components in order to remove all plastic parts from it so it could be sandblasted and then coated. I removed all individual hardware such as snaps and bolts etc. There were schematics on Softopper's website to guide me but I mostly just took pictures as I went in order to know how to put it all back together.

Disassembly and reassembly were simple but took an hour or two as it breaks down into quite a few pieces. I had the bedrails, the clamps, and all of the frame supports coated.

Something I learned in disassembly was that the frame is put together in a very snug fashion, and the extra coating of the powdercoat meant that some pieces were thicker than they were previously and therefore would not slide together like they had before. In order to alleviate this I made sure not to have powder coated the male ends of the frame supports that slid into their coinciding female ends. The shop has a specific heat resistant tape they can use to tape anything that you don't want powdercoated. This was also an issue in relation to the tent pole like buttons that snap into holes when the frame supports go together. I had to drill these out slightly larger to get them to fit but it did not compromise the structural integrity in any way.

I also had to drill out and remove the rivets holding the straps to the frame. I made sure not to damage the straps and emailed Softopper requesting a set of screws to replace the rivets I drilled out. They sent me these in quick order and only asked me to pay for shipping.

I applied some foam weather stripping to one spot of the forward-most bed clamps where the frame of the topper rubs against them when the entire topper is folded down toward the cab, in order to avoid chipping the paint.

So far it is holding up really well and looks much better black than the shiny aluminum. If someone were to do this themselves they would likely encounter some small issues like I did but overall it was very straight forward. Also to note I have an older model of the topper, the only difference that I can tell is the bedrails are different than the updated ones but I have a feeling that the new ones can be disassembled from their plastic components just as mine did.

I'm attaching a few pictures, I did not take pictures during assembly of the whole thing but it was really easy, just took it all apart and put it back together, being sure I knew how it was all supposed to fit before I took it apart. Hopefully this can help someone else if they ever decide to have theirs painted.

 

Topper and truck look great!

 

I wish I had seen this thread to give you some input. But it looks great @skunk. I think they look much better black than the bare aluminum. I got mine powder coated textured matte black last summer for like $150, called up Softopper for the rivets like you, messed a couple up by putting them in backward, so luckily they sent a couple extras of each! BUT similar to you, I wouldnt have done it in hindsight either. Ahh well...

 

Thanks! Still debating on getting a hard top or not but for now I am liking this set up.