Leer Soft Tonneau Cover - Roll Up - Vinyl and Aluminum

Video Transcript for Leer Soft Tonneau Cover Installation - 2021 Ford F-150

How's it going It's Ethan here at etrailer. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Leer soft roll up tonneau cover on our 2021 Ford F-150. This is going to be a great way to keep items in your truck bed protected, whether that's just from the elements or from theft out of sight. It's gonna be a lot harder for people to get into especially 'cause we do have a lock and tailgate here on our F-150. So, protection there. Also, you do get a little bit better fuel economy if you leave this on for longer periods of time.

So, let's take a closer look. The cover is made of double reinforced vinyl. It's got a nice matte black finish so it's not super shiny. If the event that you're driving and the sun's behind you, you don't get a terrible glare bouncing off of there. It's also got these aluminum struts that go all the way throughout, which helps keep some of that tension on top and keeps the cover reinforced, especially if you're parked and it rains.

That rainwater isn't just going to collect and sag the cover down. Also, we do have weather strips that run along the back of the bulkhead and along the back of the vehicle, so that'll help keep that water out, as well. I did mention that this cover has the ability to roll up, so let's get the tailgate open and show you a little bit about how that works. So, we do have these clamps underneath the inside or if you pinch one of these, it'll open the cover. So, from here, we can start rolling it up.

I'm gonna roll this up from the middle on the bed. If you have a bunch of things in your truck bed, this might not be quite as realistic for you. I'm just doing it to try to keep things as even as possible. You can do it from one side or the other. Just gonna have to be patient and try to make sure that hook and loop stays in line so you're not messing up your fit later.

But once we get to this point, we'll grab some of these buckles that we keep underneath in our bed, fit them in and tighten them down through that side. Come back over here to the passenger side. This one actually needs to be loosened up a little bit. Get that in the buckle, as well. Tighten that up, and now we can drive with it in this position and we have full bed access. As you can see, one of the benefits of using one of the soft covers like the one we have here, is the fact that in the stored position that we can also drive in, we have full visibility out of our rear window. You can barely see the cover over the seats, so compare that to some of the other folding options when they're in the stowed position, they're gonna take up pretty much your full rear window. This is gonna be a huge step above that. Now, to roll that cover down, I'm just gonna undo these buckles again. We'll leave those in the down position, and I'll just slowly roll this out. This is one of the downsides of using this cover is this process right here and keeping this in line with that hook and loop strap. It's gonna be way easier with a folding cover, but again, you do sacrifice some things that we already talked about in this video. So for now, I'm just gonna get this in place, hop down, get this into those channels. (equipment clicks) And push down, close our tailgate up, and then I'll walk up and down each side and get those hook and loop straps back in place. The first step is going to be getting this weather strip out and installed. So, all you need to do is pull off this adhesive backing and put it along the bulkhead of your F-150. In our case, just for demonstration purposes, we're not actually going to remove that seal and put it on, but that would be your first step. First step in getting our rails ready is making sure that we have the right rail for the right side. So in this case, we want to make sure that we have that hook and loop strip facing out first of all. And then, we wanna make sure that we have this latch towards the back end and we want this opening here towards the front end of the vehicle. So in our case, this is going to be our driver's side rail. Just like that. From here, we have three clamps that are gonna slide into the channel on our rails. First thing we need to do is loosen these up. Just use the provided Allen tool to get these fairly loose. I already have the other two loosened up. So, now, we can take a look at that channel. This is where that's gonna slide into. So, we need to match up this part of the clamps here with the top of that channel and just slide it through. (equipment clicks) That's one. And we'll repeat that for the next two clamps. (equipment clicks) Two. And again, just lining 'em up, fitting them in the channel. Slide them down. We'll get one roughly towards the end one towards the middle, and one towards the front. This next part is going to be the trickiest portion of the install. It's getting the clamps up and under the rails and getting the rails on top. If you have another person to help out, I would definitely recommend it. Otherwise, we just wanna try to come in at an angle so we can get the clamps underneath the rails. So, we'll try that here. Got 'em up and oriented correctly. Just have to get them underneath the rails. (clamps click) So, right there is pretty good. We just need to get this up. We have the other two in. We just need to get this back one. (clamps click) There we go. From here before we tighten up the front bolts, we're going to use the other provided bolts to thread in underneath so we can force the backside of our clamps up to the position behind the rails that we're going to want them to be at. So, I'm just gonna hand thread this until it gets nice and snug. And then I'm gonna come back with the provided Allen tool, and we're going to tighten it down just one or two more turns. Right about there is probably good. And now, we'll tighten up the front, and then we're going to repeat this process with the other two clamps. Once we have all three clamps tightened up and in place, we can actually remove these bottom bolts so when you're tightening them up, you don't have to be super tight with it. We can remove these but we definitely want to keep them around just in case we need to make any adjustments later on. But for now, we'll get these out of the way and then we'll repeat this whole process for the other side on those, on the passenger side rails. After we have both of our rails on and in place, it's a good idea just to look and make sure that they're flush along the top side of our truck bed rails. Also, we want to go back and double check all of our bolts on our clamps just because as we took those bottom bolts out, the front tended to shift just a little bit, so go back and tighten all this up. Also, now is a good time to check if you have enough clearance to close your tailgate fully. Again, because we have this liner in our bed, depending on your situation, this may or may not be an issue for you. We wanna get our rails as close up to the back of that liner as you can, and then we should be able to shut our tailgate. But if you find that your tailgate isn't able to shut, you might wanna go back, adjust the rails as far back as you can. Next, we're gonna get our cover prepared. So, I just have it up in the bed with me right now. I'm just gonna set it roughly in place and then we're going to get our hex bolts set up. So, as they arrive in the box, they're gonna come with this barrel nut, flower nut, lock washer and flat washer on the end. We can get rid of everything for now but the hex bolt. So, we'll get that all removed. Keep them in a safe place so we don't forget where they are. And then, we're gonna get these hex bolts slid into the channel on our cover. Just remove those washers. So, right here, you see where that opening is at the end of each channel. Just go in at an angle with the hex bolt. Slide it into there. Just let that be for now. Repeat that process for the other side. Next, we're going to get these bolts that we just put in lined up with this opening on our rails. Should be one on either side. So for now, we'll just try to get them roughly in there. Right about there looks good. And they're both down and in place. Underneath our cover, we can see that there are some notches here in the front where the back of the cover is going to sit. So, if we want to, we can adjust this and make sure we have the same on both sides. I'm gonna go for two notches in our case. We're gonna have to roll the cover down and test it out and come back and adjust it if we need to. For now though, I'm going to leave it at two. We'll tighten up the bolt underneath, unroll it and see where we're at. Now, we're just gonna put all our pieces back on this bolt the way they came off. So, flat washer, split washer, flower nut, tighten that up. And then, once we get that tightened up, we're gonna put this barrel nut on the very bottom. So again, just like everything else, we're going to repeat this process with both sides. I'm not gonna tighten everything down fully just yet 'cause there's a really good chance we're gonna have to come back and adjust this. But that's how you do it. First thing we're gonna do is pull this weather strip all the way out. Just make sure it's flush. Again, there's a really good chance we have to come back and adjust, so it doesn't have to be perfect just yet, but get it out from underneath the cover. Next, we're going to undo these buckles and we're gonna roll our cover down and see how our fit looks. Do the best that you can to make sure that that hook and loop is staying on both sides. If you pull it down unevenly, your fit won't be true and you won't really be able to tell if you're on or not. So, just taking my time here. Remove this styrofoam packaging and let's see how we fit. So we're gonna slide the cover into this channel here and try to push down. Make sure it's in on the other side, as well. (cover clicks) And that actually looks pretty good. Took a little bit of effort, so I might just check and see what the next step back would be. But right here is actually pretty solid. Let's see as we close. (door clicks shut) Because we took our time in unrolling it, we should just be able to walk this hook and loop strap down the side, making sure that we're in there, flush the whole way down. Look pretty good on this side. So, as always, I'm gonna go to the other side and repeat this process. Once we have that hook and loop firmly in place on both sides, just double check the inside. In our case, I didn't tighten down these nuts all the way, so make sure you go back and do that if you left it a little bit looser 'cause you didn't know how it was gonna fit. Tighten those up, and that's it for the install. Overall, if you're looking for an effective way to keep the inside items of your truck bed more secure and safe against elements or theft, this is gonna be a great option for you. The fact that we roll it up and store it in that still position and still have full visibility out of our rear window is super nice. The built-in tension keeps any sort of rainwater from collecting, any sort of dirt or debris, and you can just get rid of that super easily. That being said, there are a couple options as far as tonneau covers go. You can get a soft folding tonneau cover, which is probably gonna be easier to install, but it's also gonna be bulkier. You're very likely either only gonna get two thirds bed access in the stowed position or if you fold it all the way up, you're gonna lose that rear window. Or you can go with a hard tonneau cover. That's gonna have a canister, though, to roll it back up in there, and that's gonna take up a lot of your bed space, as well. So, there are a few different options and a few different ways to go. This is sort of an in between option. Again today, we just took a quick look at the Leer soft roll up counter cover, and you saw how we install it and how it fits on a 2021 Ford F-150.