etrailer Soft Tonneau Cover - Roll-Up - Vinyl and Aluminum

Video Transcript for etrailer Soft Roll-Up Tonneau Cover Installation - 2023 Ford F-150

Hi, everyone, Aidan here at etrailer. Today we're gonna be taking a look at and later be showing you how to install this etrailer soft roll-up tonneau cover on the back of our 2023 Ford F-150. Adding a tonneau cover to your F-150 is gonna be a great addition because it's gonna add a little bit of bed protection from things like the elements, it's gonna keep your stuff out of sight, it's gonna help a little bit with fuel economy at those higher highway speeds, and just generally, I think it adds a nice look to the truck. Now when it comes to tonneau cover options, you can separate them into two main categories, hard covers and soft covers. While the soft covers are not gonna provide as much protection for your bed, anyone can come through with a knife and cut through it and get to the stuff inside, if they're determined enough, it will still do those basic functions of keeping your stuff out of sight and out of mind. But more importantly, I think just offering that general weather protection, keeping rain and the elements from just totally barraging down on your stuff and keeping the bed covered up nice and neat.

And when choosing a soft cover, you've got folding and rolling. This is going to be a rolling cover. We'll release it by pulling these two yellow straps, and that'll disengage the latches, allowing us to roll the whole thing up against the cab of the truck. Now, personally, I like the soft rolling covers. I find them a little bit easier to operate, but more importantly, they give me more room to access the bed of my truck.

Whereas a soft folding cover typically would only fold in three, maybe four sections, and take up a lot more bed space because most of those don't really have the ability to fold fully upright, like a hard folding cover might. And even if you do decide to upgrade to a hard folding cover, if it does fold fully upright, it's gonna completely block the back glass. So for me, the soft rolling style is a nice hybrid, where we get tons of visibility out the back, we don't really block much of the bed space, if any at all, and it still gives us that basic protection. We will need to buckle it in in that fully open position though to the buckles present at the back, and then you can just tighten this down for easier storage and to make sure it stays put. So when it comes to tonneau covers, I am a little bit biased to this style.

My dad had a soft rolling cover all growing up, so I'm very used to it. Some people may not love it because whenever you do fold it back out, you have to go back through to the sides and press down on the hook-and-loop just to make sure it gets a good solid seal, but this is the style I grew up with and I think it's very easy to get used to. And again, the big draw here is that you get the most use out of your truck bed. Even if you had something pretty large, like a big appliance or a box you wanted to put all the way to the front of the bed, this roll is a bit flexible. So you can really move it around.

It's not gonna damage your cab, if it does touch, and it's gonna give you more flexibility to use your truck like a truck. Now, as we unroll it, it's gonna be pretty quick to do. And while we're doing that, you'll see these metal ribs periodically throughout the cover, and those do bow up a bit. So when the cover's closed, it's gonna help with water runoff. And whenever I get these latches lined up and throw the cover down, you really see all the wrinkles and the tension get taken out. So you get a nice tough cover. Water isn't gonna pool as easily here. And we can always adjust the tension later on as the cover ages, maybe stretches out a bit. And here's what I mean about going back through for the hook-and-loop. Just closing the cover, it doesn't really cinch down properly. So before you start driving, I always like to just go through on both sides and press it firmly down. Again, it's just an extra little step that you'll have to take with this style, but you get used to it pretty quick. This cover will sit on top of the bed rails and add a bit of height, about an inch from the bed rails to the top of the cover. And on the F-150, it does cover up our stake pockets pretty significantly. So if you wanted to use those to add something like a tie-down ring or maybe even a ladder rack, it wouldn't be compatible with this style of cover. But the overall fit and finish here is not bad. If you don't mind it being a little bit taller up and having a bit of a hump in the middle, where those bars do bow up a bit, then it's gonna be just fine. And the installation of this cover is actually really straightforward. It's probably one of their favorite parts because it really only requires one Allen key, which we provide, and the rest of the clamps you can do with no tools at all. Let's walk you through that process so you can see what it looks like on your F-150 right now though. And when gonna start the installation off by taking your side rails out of the box and just figuring out the proper orientation because there is a right and left side. Pretty easy to figure out the outside edge because you've got this hook-and-loop strip that'll run the entire length of the tonneau cover. And then at the tailgate side, we're gonna have a sticker that says right or left, again, letting us know whether we have driver or passenger side, but we're gonna have also this tensioning latch that is going to face the tailgate and we can just set the proper rail onto the bed rail. But for now, just set it on the bed rail pretty loosely with the back end hanging off the tailgate just a little bit because we need to give ourselves some room to work up front. Then we can set the tonneau cover on the bulkhead of the truck and turn our attention to the corners, where we're gonna have these little elbow brackets, and this shape here, which will line up with the side rail as we slide them in together. This is how those two pieces will slide together. I'll do my best to keep my head and hands out of the way. But once you get that block to slide into the track, just go back through with the included Allen key and tighten that set screw down all the way. With both side rails installed, we can take the rest of the cover. And this rubber flap that's present along the whole front side, we're gonna try to get that to lay over the bulkhead of our truck. Now, you'll probably need to come back to this at some point to adjust fitment, but for now, I'm just gonna slide it forward, make sure it's overlapping, and I can always pull it close to the tailgate later. When everything is roughly centered up, we're gonna grab our included clamps, it's all one big assembly with this hand knob, and you wanna put them onto the side rail, avoiding these yellow markers, which will line up with our reinforcement ribs on the cover. So you may need to loosen that hand knob a bit or entirely remove it, line up the top section of the clamp with the small lip that's present, get that bolt fed through the whole bottom part of the clamp, and then attach that hand knob. Now placement here is not exactly anything specific, but there's gonna be three per side. One that's close as we can get it to the tailgate without hitting anything underneath our bed rail that would obstruct it, one is close to the cab of the truck, and then one as close to the middle as we can get it. Again, just avoiding any strange obstructions that might be present under the bed rail or on those yellow markers. And, of course, we're just gonna repeat that same process on the other side too. Once we have all the sides installed, we can do our first test fit. And to test fit the cover, we're just gonna unbuckle the safety straps on both sides. Out of the box, that should be buckled. And just unroll the cover, testing for fitment. So as we're doing this, all those support bars shouldn't hit the clamps. When we get to the very end, we wanna make sure that we have enough room for these teeth to grab in here. If they don't, then maybe the ends of our bars are too close together. (tonneau cover thuds) And overall, that fit feels pretty good. It's maybe a little snug, but I can check for tailgate clearance too, (tailgate thuds) make sure that my seal is engaging pretty well throughout the entire length of the tailgate, and that all the edges are pressed down firmly enough. If you're not happy with the fitment, for whatever reason, you can loosen up your clamps and shift them forward or back. If the cover seems like it's sitting a bit tall, chances are the clamps aren't tightened down enough, but you just have to play with it to find the right fit for you and your truck. Because everything sits on top of the bed rails, particularly that front to back fitment can be a bit tricky, but just make sure that the weather seals are engaged properly on both the tailgate and the bulkhead. But when you're happy with the results and how the cover's fitting, that'll do it. It's a pretty simple installation, overall. And if you're looking for a soft roll-up cover for your F-150, then I think this option from etrailer is a great place to go. But that'll do it for our look at the etrailer soft roll-up cover on our 2023 Ford F-150. Thanks for watching.