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

Video Transcript for etrailer Roll-Up Soft Tonneau Cover Installation - 2023 GMC Sierra 1500

Hi, I'm Matt with etrailer, and today we're talking about the etrailer soft roll up tonneau cover on the back of our 2023 GMC Sierra 1500. Now, this is gonna be a great option for you if you're really just looking for something that's gonna be at an affordable cost range and it's gonna keep a lot of water or snow from getting in the back of your bed. Or if you want to help keep anything out of sight, this will do that too. So let's check it out. Like I said at the beginning, this is gonna be a soft tonneau cover. It's gonna have this UV resistant top to it, so this is gonna last you a long time when the sun's beating down on it.

Now, as far as keeping things in here and theft deterrence, the only way to open it up is from the tailgate, especially if it is a locking tailgate, but it's really only gonna deter any theft. If someone's really determined, they can come over here and cut this right open and grab anything that's in here. Really, what this is doing is just kind of keeping anything out of sight so it's out of mind. While the main attraction might not be as theft deterrence, what it does do good is keeping water or snow out of your bed. Something that will point out with that, we do have these beams or ribs that go across.

It can be made out of aluminum and it does give this a little bit of a bow. While that might not be the most aesthetically pleasing look to it, what it's gonna help do is when that water builds up on top of here, it's gonna help shift it so it rolls off the top of it and that's gonna prevent the vinyl from on top of it from sagging or loosening up over time. I will say though, if you do have a lot of snow building up on top of this, I'd try to get that off as soon as you can because over time that could wear down on those beams or the vinyl itself. I did say this was a roll up, so let me show you what that means. So I'll open this up or retract it.

You're gonna have these two kind of loops. You'll pull down on it, so a detach, and it'll roll into itself. And this is gonna be held in place to the rails by a hook and loop system. This does take a minute to roll all the way up. But how this is going to be different from our other type of tonneau covers, like a fold up option, this isn't gonna take up as much room as a fold up option, whether you have one that just sits in the back of your bed, which will take up a big panel of your bed, or one of the fold up ones that blocks your back window entirely.

And what's good about this too is it's not gonna take up any of your bed space like a canister style would. But when you have this all the way rolled up, we're gonna just take these clips and just secure everything down so it's not bouncing around while you drive. I know I always talk about how little space this is gonna take up on the back of our vehicle, but let me just talk about or show you how much that's gonna be. So looking at the back of our window, it's really only gonna be level with the center headrest we had back here, which isn't bad at all. That exact measurement can shift a little bit since this is a soft roll up. That's gonna be just over four inches, which is really good. That's with the distance out. But go from our bulkhead, the furthest point out on this tonneau cover. That's only gonna be about six inches. Nothing too crazy. And you can push this in some too. So that is subject to change. If you really wanted to, you can take this off pretty easily and just leave the rails on here. As for the space underneath this, since this is sitting on top of our rails, this is sitting up kind of high, so if I get the distance from this mat we have in here, which is probably sticking up by an inch to the bottom of this tonneau cover, that's about 22 inches. So if you had anything in here that is a little bit taller or anything like a fifth wheel, you want to keep that covered from a lot of snow building on top of that, this is gonna be a great option to work with it. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about with removing this tunnel cover, you'll find this bolt we have underneath here that connects to your rails. I already have mine loosened up, but we will talk about that more on the install portion of this video. With that loosened up, all I have to do is apply pressure to it, slide it off and it comes right off in seconds. And you'll notice this is pretty loose when we're first unrolling it and that's just how most of them are gonna be, but you'll notice we do have these tension plates near our tailgate end. The way this is gonna work is to get a lot of that looseness out of this tonneau cover. We're gonna have this lever and it's gonna go right into that plate. And this is designed so where you can get a lot of that looseness out of here, but with over time, if this does start to loosen up on you, you can actually adjust that and make sure if this does loosen up, you can tighten it right back up. You'll notice we also do have weather seals on here, which is gonna be this weather strip that lines our tonneau cover, that's gonna help to assist to keep a lot of water out of here. As you can see, it's just right up against our tailgate. This is also gonna align the rest of our side rails too. You might have some gaps at these corners, but that's just gonna be some small areas. This is gonna go all the way back until it's behind our bulkhead too. And right next to this we're gonna have this hook and loop system right above there. This is something we want to make sure this is all the way down when you put this tonic cover in place to prevent water from seeping in here. You also notice we do have one layer of stitches going across. I'm not a huge fan of that. I think if it was maybe doubled up, that'd be a little more secure because with over time, that will start to kind of come apart. But it's just something to think about when you are using it. But here's that weather strip on the bulkhead side to prevent a lot of water from seeping in through the back. Talking about how it's gonna fit with it in this position on top of your bed, it is gonna add a decent amount to your vehicle. It might not be super sleek. This is gonna stick out just about an inch and a quarter, which isn't so bad. What it's gonna do for you though is it's gonna give you more room beneath it. Like I was talking about earlier, if you want to put a fifth (indistinct) on here, it's gonna be great for that. If you're looking for something more sleek and more clean to it, I'd probably go with a different tonneau cover, but if you're just looking for something to keep rain or snow from the back of your bed, then I think this will be a great option. As far as the install goes, it's pretty straight, not too bad. One of my favorite things about putting this together though is the clamps. They're fairly simple. The hand knobs on them are easy to use. Getting everything lined up initially though can be kind of tricky. They might be a little bit back and forth, but if you want to see how we handle that, just stay tuned and we'll walk you through the process. To start off the installation, I'm gonna have my rails on top of my bed rails. And the way to figure out if you get this in the right orientation is you want to make sure for your driver's side you have the one labeled left and the one on your passenger side labeled right. And it should be having this tension plate near your tailgate side, and the other side should just be open just like this. Just make sure you lay both sides on your bed rails with that foam pad on the bottom of it with both your rails just roughly placed on your bed rails, we're gonna grab the tonneau cover now. And what we're gonna be trying to do is grab the side with this weather strip flap and we're gonna put this on your bulkhead. What we recommend doing is when you do that is to make sure that flap wraps entirely around it, so when you do have this on, water just rolls over the top of it instead of getting in your bed. So that process, it's gonna look like this. Me lining it up. Pushing that strip over our bulkhead until centered on our rails. Now, we we inchesre just talking about wrapping that weather strip around the back front bulkhead. That's actually gonna be easier to do after this next step. That's gonna be attaching our tonneau cover to our rails. And how we do that is we want to lift up on that tonneau cover until you can see this bracket. There's gonna be a bolt right here. It's gonna have this lock nut on the other side. You want to make sure that you push that in, so it's gonna be a lot easier to push through this channel right there. You might have to loosen the bolt a little bit. That's what I had to do on the other side. And we're just gonna slide this in until this sits flush right here. Once that's flush, you're gonna grab your included allen key and we're gonna tighten this down. Once this is tightened down, you'll just repeat that process on the other side. We're gonna lower the tonneau cover back down to how it was sitting originally. Come back over here to that weather strip that I was talking about and now we can really start to push this over our bulkhead. Some spots are gonna be a little tight, right in the center is probably gonna be the most difficult spot, but if you just run your fingers underneath it, you should be able to get it with time. We're gonna start securing our tonneau cover to our bed rails. And what I did before is just make sure it's even on both sides. So I just measured the distance from the end of our rail to this divot right here and made sure it was the same on both sides. I also made sure if we do have an overhang, it's even on both sides. So this is centered on our bed. After when you've done that, you can grab your clamps and what I suggest doing is just removing this knob at the bottom so you can actually get this around your bed rails and tonneau cover rails. And the spots we want to put this is we want to avoid this right here. We don't want to put it on that yellow spot. So you can go next to it wherever you want, but I'm gonna go right here, closest to the tailgate end for the first one. With this roughly in place, I'm gonna grab that knob. We can put this on. We don't want to put this on completely, we still want this to be pretty loose. And when you place it on, the orientation that you want, you notice we have this small divot at the very top, that's what's gonna grab the inside of your tonneau cover rails. Another good indicator to go by is if this knob is on the bottom, you know you're gonna be on the right track. Then we'll just repeat that process with the other two on this side and then put them on the other side as well. With all your clamps loosely in place, what we're gonna do a little bit different from the instructions is test our fitment just in case we have to adjust the setting. So to do that, I'm gonna unroll my tonneau cover and just make sure it's gonna extend fully. And what I'm mainly checking for at this point is to see how my tailgate interacts with it. And as you can see right there, we have plenty of space. So what we're gonna have to do is move this tonneau cover back some. After when you've adjusted this, we're just gonna check it one more time. And you notice this is pretty tight. And this actually comes shipped in the loosest setting. So if this loosens over time, you'll be able to tighten that up with that plate that's installed on here. I'll show you how to do that in a little bit, but let's check this fitment. As you can see, this is closing pretty good. We're getting pretty good engagement, and now we're gonna start to tighten everything the rest of the way down. Here's the tensioning plate I was talking about earlier. And if you notice, there's this white dot up top and it's on the one currently. And if you want to tighten this up in the future, you're just gonna have to push it forward until it matches up with these other numbers. To adjust it, you're just gonna take your allen key, go do these two set screws right in here, loosen them up a bit, and that'll give you the ability to adjust that. But since we don't have to make any adjustments today, we can put our end caps on our clamps just at the bottom, underneath that hand knob. Sometimes you might have to just thread it on rather than push it on, whatever works best for you. And we'll just roll this out one last time, just to double check our fitment, making sure everything feels pretty good, everything's even. And once we have this completely rolled out, we'll check that tailgate one more time. And it looks pretty good. You're getting good sealing all the way around. And that will complete the installation and some of the features of the etrailer soft tonneau cover on our 2023 GMC Sierra 1500. Thanks for watching.