etrailer Hard Tonneau Cover - Folding - Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic

Video Transcript for How Does the etrailer Hard Tonneau Cover Fit on a 2022 Toyota Tacoma?

Hi, I'm Matt, with etrailer. If you're looking for something that's just gonna offer you a little bit more protection on the back of your 2022 Toyota Tacoma, then the etrailer Quad Hard Fold-up Tonneau Cover is gonna be a great option for you. So let's check it out. So this is gonna be perfect if you're looking for just a little bit more security in the back of your bed for maybe when you are hauling any of your tools, or if you have anything back here that you don't want anyone come by and just taking. And if you are looking for just a little bit more protection from the elements, you don't want anything you have back here, getting rained on directly, this is also gonna help out with that. Like I said earlier, this is gonna be a hard tonneau cover, and there's really gonna be two main types of tonneau covers.

You're gonna have your hard and your soft ones. Your soft ones are great just to keep any of the elements away from the interior of your bed to prevent any rain damage from occurring. But they're not gonna be great for security, because someone, at the end of the day, could just come up to that, cut that tonneau cover open, and then grab whatever they want. With this, they can't do that. The only way they can get to, or underneath, your bed, is by actually opening up the tailgate.

Once we open up the tailgate, that's gonna reveal some levers that we can actually pull and use to actually operate this. They're really easy to use. They're gonna be located right here. You can squeeze this from either side. So if you're in a situation where you can't access you driver or your passenger side, you can just go over to the other side .

And you're gonna notice for each section we have, we actually have to pull that lever again, fold it up until it gets all the way near our bulkhead. Now you probably also will notice that we do still take up a decent amount of our bed. I can still reach underneath here and grab most of what I need, but if you are looking for something that's really going to accommodate all the space that we could save, then I'd recommend checking out two types. I'd either recommend checking out a trifold tonneau cover that has the ability to fold hold the way up against our cab. Now the drawback to that is it's gonna cover up our back window, so you won't be able to see out of it.

And if that's an issue for you, then I'd recommend checking out those soft roll-up tonneau covers, because they can actually roll up pretty tight, since they are soft, and they don't take up a whole lot of bed space either. And the way this is gonna secure down, is we're gonna have this buckle. You're gonna have to pull that if you find that it's not tight enough, make your adjustments, and this is gonna secure it in place. And right next to that you're gonna find that we have this you weather strip that covers the bulkhead side of our tonneau cover. You're gonna have one that covers the tailgate side too. We're also gonna have this area that's protected on the side. We'll have some rubber here. And on the tonneau cover itself, we're gonna have these strips that lay underneath it. So that's gonna help keep a lot of water from entering inside your bed. Now no tonneau cover is completely waterproof. You're always probably gonna get just a little bit of water coming in. But if you find a spot that is still getting a lot of water entering in, this kit does come with some butyl tape, and that butyl tape you can just put in any big gaps you see and make sure you don't have a ton of water coming in from that section. Let's get a few measurements just to see how this is gonna look back here. So for right now, let's see how high it sits up in that folded up position. That's gonna sit at a little bit under 4 1/2 inches. It isn't too high. It is something to think about. When you are looking out your back window, you're definitely gonna notice it. Now with this all the way folded out, it is only gonna stick up by an inch, so it won't have a super clean finish like some other options, but it's not too bad either. Now let's get the distance underneath the tonneau cover. That's gonna be important, 'cause it's gonna allow you to know what you can fit underneath here and have it secured. That's gonna be about 19 1/2 inches. Also not too bad, just make sure you know what can't fit underneath there. And if you do run into any situations where you need the back open, you still can store items underneath this back area. But talking about that back area, let's see how far it sticks out. This panel is gonna be a little bit over 16 inches. So in most cases that doesn't take up a whole lot of space. Now this is a shorter bed, so you're probably gonna notice it in some instances. So what you actually can do is remove the tonneau cover itself. It's not too bad, it's just being held in placed by four bolts. And unlike some other ones that are pretty tight to unthread, this one was actually pretty easy, and it will be a little bit tedious, but if you really need that extra space for a day or two, to help someone move, and then when you're done helping them move, you can throw this back on, honestly, I don't think that's too bad. And talking about how everything's attached, this will actually use the track systems on your Tacoma. And at first I thought it was a little tricky, but working with it a bit, actually, I don't think this is too bad, and this really does give us more of a clean finish and allows us to make adjustments a little bit better too. And what I do like about it is, yes, we do have to use some tools, you'll use some Allen keys that come included with your kit, but we won't have to do any drilling at all. As far as unfolding it too, it's actually pretty smooth. Now there's a couple things you need to be aware of. When you close it, try to make sure that it is clamping into place, and since it is a little bit heavier, try to make sure that your fingers don't stay underneath, because you don't wanna smash it. But that extra heft is gonna go into the sturdiness of the tonneau cover, because this is also gonna have a weight capacity up to 200 pounds. So maybe when you are pulling some tools out of here, you need to set something on top of here, that's gonna be completely fine. Just make sure it's not too terribly heavy. Anything like your basic tools. Now in my opinion, I think this is a great tonneau cover if you are just looking for that extra protection in the back of your bed. Now if you're wanting to really maximize the amount of space you can get outta your bed, and you don't need that extra security, then I'd recommend just a regular soft rollup tonneau cover, because that's gonna be able to really roll up close to your cab. But if you do need that extra security, then I think this is great, especially if you are looking for something more on the entry-level side, 'cause this really does clear all the basics. Now as far as the installation goes, we did run into a few issues, mainly with those clamps, because the instructions can be a little bit vague, but once we we inchesre able to figure out what they we inchesre saying, it was a lot more smooth. Now if you also have issues trying to interpreting what the instructions are saying, just stay tuned and we'll walk you through the process. To start off the installation, we're gonna lay everything out, and I kinda recommend laying everything out to their relative sides, just keep things a little bit more organized, and then we're gonna grab our rails. This is what we're gonna start with. You need to make sure you grab the correct one for the correct side. So this right here says left. So we're gonna put this on our left side, in my case that is the driver's side. And the way we just put this into place is just by pushing on here, and I'm gonna try to push this all the way back, so this bracket is up against near where our bulkhead is, just like that. Now if we do run into any fitment issues later on, what we can do is just slide this whole thing back. But for right now we're gonna keep it even on both sides. Now we need those rails to stay in place, and we're gonna do this with this clamp. Now this is gonna come in pieces. The way you're gonna put this together though, is this is gonna be the section that grabs onto your tonneau cover rails. This is gonna be a plate that goes in between. We're gonna use this hole right here that is not threaded. And then we're gonna have this final piece that's gonna back behind this. And this is gonna go inside of your track system. This is only held in place by this bolt that goes through. Lastly, I'm gonna flip that plate around, 'cause we want the taller section to be facing up. So this is what it's roughly gonna look like. So let's try this out now. Now I already installed the other two clamps, but I'll show you how to do the last one. And this is gonna get a lot easier when you do the last one, because the other two are gonna be holding it up in place. So we're gonna start by removing this cap to your rails, or your tracks, and then I'm gonna grab this backing piece to our bracket or clamp, and we're gonna slide it in just like this. It should extend, like it is right now, and grab hold. I'm gonna push it a little bit past this opening right here. Leave it there for a moment. And now I'm gonna grab the front part of this clamp, and at the top we're gonna have these indentations. These are gonna grab onto our tonneau cover rails. We're gonna slide it up through this opening and roughly line it in place. Then we're gonna grab this plate. Like I said earlier, we wanna use this hole, and I'm actually gonna flip this around, 'cause the way this works is it's gonna go in between this clamp and behind our tonneau cover rails. So just slide it in there, apply pressure to the top. And this is all gonna be held in place by this bolt, which will go through there. And then we're gonna try to thread this on with that backing. Now you might have to push things a little bit, and it's probably the trickiest part of this whole process is just trying to get everything aligned and just work with it a bit. You'll finally get it. Now that it's grabbed on, I'm gonna grab our Allen key and tighten it into place. Now the reason why I oriented my clamps like this, is just so we're getting even pressured to this rail. So it's gonna be a good fit overall. And you might be wondering about this last clamp that's closest to our tailgate, why I didn't push it a little bit closer to the end. And the answer is 'cause we have this end cap, and if I put this in place, this is actually gonna get in the way of us putting this clamp here. I also don't wanna put it in front of that opening, 'cause it's not gonna be structurally sound, so this was the next best spot. Now we are also gonna have this supporting bracket here, and the place we're gonna put this is near our bulkhead side. We wanna put this in between these two clamps at the very end, and we just kinda roughly want it roughly in the center, and we wanna make sure that the higher point is facing up. We can finally put our tonneau cover in place. Now you wanna sure that these buckles are facing towards our bulkhead or our cab. Once we've established that, you can grab a friend and roughly place this where you need it to be, or you can do it yourself. Just be careful you don't scratch nothing up. I'm just gonna lightly lay it down. And if we need to make any adjustments, we can do that afterwards. Now let's actually test how this is gonna look on the bed. So I unbuckled the other side, I'm gonna do the same thing over here too. With that done, we're gonna just try to just unfold this, making sure everything is aligned, is working properly. And I wouldn't expect it to really grab on quite yet. I'm gonna move this out of our way so it's not distracting. But the biggest thing I'm looking for is just seeing how our tailgate shuts. And right now, as you see, it popped up a bit, so I'm probably gonna have to just shift this back just a tad bit, just walk in the back some. That feels pretty good. Try this again. And right now, I'm feeling it kinda grab on a bit more. That's a good sign. I'm gonna try it again. That feels a lot better. Now this next part is gonna be a little tricky. So what we're gonna be doing, is securing the back part of this to tonneau cover to your bed. So if we look up here, we're gonna have this bolt that's hiding up here. This is actually going to extend out, just like that. And what we're trying to do is to put this spacer through here, and what's gonna happen is we're gonna lower this down, and that bolt's gonna go through that bracket. Now this is a little bit tricky to do like this, and I recommend doing both sides at the same time. And what you might have to do is get underneath the tonneau cover itself. That's probably what I'm gonna do. And if you do choose to get underneath your tonneau cover, this make a great point to really fix any of this weather strip that's caught up underneath here. This is gonna allow this to sit a lot more flush on top of your bed. You can kinda pull down on it. Now we're getting a great fit. We're eventually gonna come over to this point where that bolt's sticking out, and we're gonna have a few things to put on top of it. So we're gonna have this wing nut, we're gonna have this end cap, and then we're gonna have this knob. Now I'm gonna start with the knob that tighten that on here. Now this is gonna be a little bit awkward with us being underneath, but compared to some other tonneau covers that I've put on like this, this is actually a great spot, because typically these knobs will run into the side of your bed. But I'm not having an issue today, making this install process a lot easier. We're just gonna tighten that down till it feels pretty secure. I'll keep going. After when this feels secure, I'm gonna grab this wing nut and I'm gonna thread that all the way down too. Now these wing nuts can be a little bit tricky to get on here, but just work with it a bit. It'll eventually get on. With that wing nut backed all the way down, then I'm gonna grab the end cap, and this won't thread all the way in place, so we'll just cover the very end of that bolt, securing right there. After when that's done, we're gonna repeat this process on the other side. We're gonna find this secondary bracket that we put on earlier. What we wanna do is try to align this to this threaded area. Once we've done that, we're just gonna grab a hand knob that comes with your kit, thread it into place. Once this is complete, then you can repeat that on the other side. Now let's check our work. We're just gonna unfold this again. Make sure everything clamps down properly, it's unfolding pretty smooth. That's looking pretty good. That's good. Making sure everything is latched properly. It looks good. And now the final test, make sure that tailgate shuts. And it all look pretty good in that respect. But let's say you did run into issues. So a few things you might wanna do is just gonna play around with the placement of your tonneau cover. You either might have to push it back some or pull it forward some, just depending on how it's interacting with your tailgate. That's pretty easy to do. You just have to go to those four clamps that we installed earlier, that connected the tonneau cover to your tonneau cover rails. Loosen them up, either slide it forward or back some, and test it out again. But once you have it fixed, you can take it out for a ride. That was just a look at the etrailer Hard Folding Tonneau Cover on our 2022 Toyota Tacoma. I'm Matt, thanks for watching.